Numeric User Gone Bad?

[Steve Holmes]

All this happened after rebooting my system after a brief visit to my 
windows environment.  I will be curious when I get back to Linux from my 
current windows session to see if any of this clears up.  I used 
capitalized $UID in all references.  In fact, it was the talkwith and 
speakupconf scripts that began failing with errors that brought all this 
to my attention and keeping in mind that those two scripts had not 
changed during this upgrade.  Squeeze is still running bash 3.something. 
  I can certainly look into trying the export of that variable but that 
doesn't tell me why Chuck isn't having this problem; unless he is 
exporting that some place.

Anyway, thanks for additional comments.  I've sure never experienced 
this before but I'm also new to these environments that update 
themselves regularly like Debian.  Since Slackware had to be updated 
manually, things actually seemed more stable but weren't as current as 
sometimes desired.  I eventually would like to go with Debian Unstable 
but just getting moved in and confortable first.

On 3/2/2009 3:33 AM, Kerry Hoath wrote:
> I don't run Debian here I run ubuntu however here are some things to check:
>
> Bash does not export all variables to subshells or subprograms and
> perhaps the behaviour has changed.
> Note that UID is in upper case, not lower case.
> You could try
> export UID
> from the login shell see if that helps.
> I noticed under OSX that the PS1 variable wasn't exported to subshells,
> export ps1
> in my login script helped.
>
> Sometimes after upgrading stuff rebooting is necessary; I assume you
> rebooted after the upgrade to squeeze? That would certainly be a good
> idea if new pam libraries or a new kernel went in.
> these people that say you don't reboot Linux take it a bit far
> sometimes, whilst Linux is extremely stable and rarely needs rebooting
> there are times when rebooting is the easiest way out of a mess,
> and sometimes the way to get you into another :)
> Regards, Kerry.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Steve Holmes" <steve at holmesgrown.com>
> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Monday, March 02, 2009 2:37 PM
> Subject: Re: Numeric User Gone Bad?
>
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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>>
>> Well, I don't like being the only one being able to demonstrate this
>> problem. I dunno if rebooting will make a difference; Linux is
>> usually pretty consistent about things. I honestly can't imagine why
>> a variable like that works at the command line but not inside a
>> shell. Frankly, I've never experienced anything like this before. I
>> upgraded to squeeze the other day (Friday) and never had any trouble
>> with these scripts until I came back into Linux last night and ran
>> talkwith this morning.
>>
>> On Sun, Mar 01, 2009 at 06:54:49PM -0500, Chuck Hallenbeck wrote:
>>> Steve,
>>>
>>> On my squeeze system, talkwith still works, and your test script gives
>>> me this:
>>>
>>> Numeric user-id = 0
>>> Character user-id = root
>>>
>>> So I wonder what's going on here?
>>>
>>> Chuck
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sun, Mar 01, 2009 at 03:23:51PM -0700, Steve Holmes wrote:
>>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>>> > Hash: RIPEMD160
>>> >
>>> > I noticed something lately, like this morning where the numeric
>>> > user-id ($UID) doesn't work inside of scripts anymore. Has anyone
>>> > else noticed this? I'm running Debian Squeeze so I have the latest
>>> > package of espeak and so on. I first noticed the problem in both
>>> > talkwith and speakupconf shell scripts. If I echo $UID from a live
>>> > shell, I hear the numeric value as I would expect. my normal account
>>> > is 1000 and when I echo it from root I hear 0. But when I execute
>>> > this command in a shell script, the $UID field always comes up as an
>>> > empty string or null so the fore mentioned shell scripts error out.
>>> >
>>> > Hear's a sample test script to try this on.
>>> > #!/bin/sh
>>> > # Test user id values
>>> > echo Numeric user-id = $UID
>>> > echo Character user-id = $USER
>>> >
>>> > When I run this script, the second echo command works beautifully but
>>> > the first one puts out the string but the value of $UID is apparently
>>> > empty because it is omitted.
>>> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>> > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
>>> >
>>> > iEYEAREDAAYFAkmrCvcACgkQWSjv55S0LfFqIQCeJaozeNd/Le2sCx+1rt8ySvCp
>>> > fbsAn24t0OIPonCOo9lS1GF4EzH+VC+k
>>> > =5Xlv
>>> > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>>> > _______________________________________________
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>>> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
>>> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>>>
>>> --
>>> The Moon is Waxing Crescent (25% of Full)
>>>
>>> My web site: www.hallenbeck.ftml.net
>>> See also: www.wedit2.ml1.net
>>> --------
>>> Please help keep the world clean: others may wish to use it.
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>>> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
>>> http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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>> iEYEAREDAAYFAkmrcIEACgkQWSjv55S0LfE1PACgwG+RuR6jakehw05equ/LAsZ3
>> hfIAoLwVoiXFob42sfBx8yh/p0gTkpfb
>> =imNn
>> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
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>> Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
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>
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