[ Please cc me, i am not on the list ] The commented-out example in adduser.conf #NAME_REGEX="^[a-z][-a-z0-9_]*\$" is wrong because it would require the username to end with a literal "$". The backslash should be removed to anchor the regex at the end of the string as intended by the author (i guess). This is not shell script! --- adduser.conf 2009-09-20 22:31:46.000000000 +0200 +++ adduser.conf.fixed 2010-05-12 01:34:33.000000000 +0200 @@ -82,4 +82,4 @@ # check user and group names also against this regular expression. -#NAME_REGEX="^[a-z][-a-z0-9_]*\$" +#NAME_REGEX="^[a-z][-a-z0-9_]*$"