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Commas in long username may cause Mail problems Apps
If you have a comma in your long username, then it appears it can cause those problems in Mail.app where it states "the mailbox ... is already in use by ...'. This happened to me when when I had my long username as "Lastname, Firstname."

It seems that sometimes the system had opened files as user "Lastname," not as my short username or full name. When I took out the comma in my full username, all my problems went away. I am surprised that the OS lets you put a character in your username that causes this problem! I'm not sure if this happens with other characters too? Now those stupid errors when checking or quitting Mail are gone!
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Commas in long username may cause Mail problems | 2 comments | Create New Account
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normal for UNIX
Authored by: wngdn on Sep 15, '02 03:55:32PM

This shows MacOS X's UNIX heritage. Normally your full name (aka "Long Username") is stored in the fifth field of /etc/passwd (NeXTstep and now MacOS X moved most of these entries into the Netinfo database, just as Sun moved them into NIS). This field is generally assumed to be comma-delimited into Full name, Location, Office phone, and Home phone. Historically the "finger" command would split these out into a nice format.

So, MacOS X is making that assumption. I agree - they should disallow commas when you input your full name.

Cheers,

Wangden



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errors also without commas
Authored by: cello on Sep 16, '02 04:45:08AM

I get these errors too ("... is already in use by ...") on a regular basis when starting or quitting Mail.app. But I don't have any commas in my full name (long username), just "FirstName LastName", separated by a blank space.
So I assume there may be some other reasons why this messages appears. Has anyone an idea?



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