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SSH and the case-sensitive username in Snow Leopard

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard introduced a lot of under-the-hood changes and many are not very obvious. One such change is to the authentication requirements for logging in remotely via SSH.

In 10.5 logging in remotely via SSH was a pretty standard affair. In 10.6, however, security has been beefed up a bit to require case-sensitive login credentials. While this requirement has already been imposed on passwords, Snow Leopard now requires a case-sensitive user name as well.

In other words, when logging in via SSH, Snow Leopard differentiates between the username "aron" and "Aron." This threw me for a loop for quite some time and is another one of the numerous reasons I have held off upgrading my Mac mini to 10.6.



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TUAW Tips Snow Leopard

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard introduced a lot of under-the-hood changes and many are not very obvious. One such change is to the...
 

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Nikax

almost the dumbest article ever. Unix is notoriously case sensitive, and apparently Apple has just gotten around to fixing this lapse. Poor practice on the user's part shouldn't be considered an OS issue. If you know enough Unix to ssh (and you can always ssh -l $USER) then you should know about case sensitivity.

January 03 2010 at 12:03 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John Doe

I was interested to see how many commenters (a) failed to grasp the poster's simple point, and (b) rushed in to be all condescending.

Free advice: Brush up on your reading comprehension skills. Do it as a New Year's gift to the rest of tuaw's readers, who are, you know, smart?

/rant against ninnies

January 03 2010 at 10:42 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to John Doe's comment
Andrew

I'd actually say you're the one that doesn't grasp the poster's point. His point, obviously, is to whine about upgraded security and let us all know (for some reason) that it's why he doesn't want to upgrade. On the contrary, he should notice this change, and be happy and embrace that security has been increased a tremendous amount with a simple change.

Now, if the article were written to sound like an informative notice to any readers who might not have known yet, that'd be a completely different story.

I should hope someone who is running so called "mission-critical" applications would be happy for more security, and jump all over it rather than complain about it.

January 04 2010 at 4:23 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John Doe

Andrew, you're wrong about that.

Obviously his point is, "change in behavior that tripped me up," not "I whine about improved security."

Do you know how I know that? Here's how: It's the very first sentence of the post.

Either you're not paying attention, or you chose to misinterpret. Since we're now almost 30 comments in, I suspect the latter, sadly for the rest of us.

January 04 2010 at 11:31 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
JKT

It never would have occurred to me SSH allowed "Aron" for "aron". Coming from a UNIX background, it's standard for case sensitivity to always be honored. Anyone who assumes otherwise is asking for trouble.

January 03 2010 at 12:01 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jacob

Aron, I am surprised you haven't encountered problems before having a short name using more than lowercase letters. ACMT training use to say to never use more than lowercase letters for usernames as there were many problems that could be encountered. Last time I had my certification was tiger.

Just some advice, stick with lower case.

January 02 2010 at 11:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
elle

You guys are yelling at him and saying his credibility is hosed because he's waiting to upgrade a mission-critical system that's already stable and functional because he's afraid of undocumented changes destabilizing it? I hope I never work where you run IT.

Since Apple didn't document the change, the only way to find out about it is for it to break something that worked in 10.5. That's Aron's complaint about 10.6 - for him, there's too many _undocumented_ changes, whether for good or bad, in 10.6 for him to trust it with mission-critical services.

You didn't have a problem? That's great, good for you. Is it a PEBKAC on Aron? Because of the lack of documentation, not really. He may not be following "best practices in computing," but by not documenting a fundamental change to how a critical system utility works, neither is Apple. That's the point of this post, which looks like it went straight over everybody's head.

January 02 2010 at 10:35 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dash16

In 10.5, was Aron logging in using 'Aron' or 'aron'? I know case sensitivity wasn't introduced until 10.6, I'm trying to find out if the problem was self inflicted. Because if he was logging in using 'Aron' in 10.5, and then failed authentication in 10.6 because 'Aron' is different from 'aron', then the failure lies with himself. PEBKAC.

Best practices in computing say you should always assume the system supports case sensitivity, will have problems with special characters and spaces, and may even choke on too many characters. Keep your usernames, passwords, and folder/file names as clutter free a possible and you won't run into these upgrade woes.

January 02 2010 at 9:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kritter

Hey, I agree this shouldn't prevent a techie from upgrading but it is a helpful tip. I couldn't figure out why I couldn't ssh from my iPhone to my iMac using air sharing. This tip helped me...I tried proper case and it worked.

January 02 2010 at 8:54 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
kolizz

Wait, they aren't case sensitive in 10.5?! Now THAT'S what I see as the big problem here!

January 02 2010 at 8:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sean

I've never commented before but this story was so stupid that I actually took the effort to leave a comment.

You held off upgrading to 10.6 because you couldn't be bothered to hold the shift key and the "a" key at the same time. I thought people who knew how to use SSH were supposed to be smart. :[

January 02 2010 at 7:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Sean's comment
raleedy

For you and all the other maroons out there: it's pretty clear from reading the post that the poster delayed upgrading because he doesn't know what problems may still lurk undiscovered in 10.6. Of which the case-sensitive username in SSH is an example. I hope your reading skills (and your discretion about displaying their deficiencies) improve in 2010.

January 02 2010 at 8:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
JAMES

@raleedy: If __case sensitivity for SSH access__ is a 'problem lurking undiscovered', then there will always be problems lurking.

The real issue here is TUAW pushing lame articles on weekends, I assume to fill some sort of quota.

January 02 2010 at 8:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
gittenlucky

I think this is a valid TuawTip and while it isn't an exhilarating story, I am sure it will help some people troubleshoot their issues.

I use X11 for my SSH connection to a Linux cluster and just assumed case sensitivity was required.

January 02 2010 at 7:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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