Users and Groups: entered user number not actually used

[David Boss]

Binary package hint: gnome-system-tools

Under Ubuntu Users and Groups, when you create a new user, it lets
you enter a number to assign, but then it ignores whatever you
entered, and assigns the next sequential number anyway. This matters
if, e.g., you've got a partition you want to share between Ubuntu and
Fedora. I use sda7 for this; I put Ubuntu in sda8 and Fedora in sda9.

When you tell Ubuntu your user name, it makes you user #1000. Then
you install Fedora and it calls you #500. Then the partition thinks
it has files created by 2 different people. In the past I've gotten
around this by giving the Ubuntu installer a throwaway name; I then
created a 2nd user and gave it #500; I threw the first userid away.
Now, this doesn't work.

This does work, under Fedora. (it's not the only thing I have to do
differently on Fedora, to make up for what Ubuntu can't do right.)
But any existing media I have, that has files belonging to user #500,
now doesn't know that's me. At least, not as long as I'm running
Ubuntu.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: gnome-system-tools 2.30.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-24.39-generic-pae 2.6.32.15+drm33.5
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-24-generic-pae i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Aug 11 17:34:21 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429)
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SourcePackage: gnome-system-tools

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

In Lucid, you can't give a UID when creating a user: you can change the UID afterwards, though. But there's bug 542183, so I'm marking this as a duplicate.