Ok so I looked at agetty's source code and the problem comes from here:
/*
* Do not allow the user to pass an option as a user name
* To be more safe: Use `--' to make sure the rest is
* interpreted as non-options by the program, if it supports it.
*/
static void check_username(const char* nm)
{
const char *p = nm;
if (!nm)
goto err;
if (strlen(nm) > 42)
goto err;
while (isspace(*p))
p++;
if (*p == '-')
goto err;
return;
err:
errno = EPERM;
log_err("checkname: %m");
}
... which is doing almost nothing. It must be that whatever is passed in
is so malformed that I get a 'Operation not permitted' error, because I
enter my username correctly and don't use dashes os spaces or something
longer then 42 characters.
Anyways I suspect that just a huge amount of garbage (along with my
username) is passed into that function because I have another problem
with some misbehaving usb devices since the upgrade to precise. I have
not reported that issue because I still have not really figured out what
is wrong. Something odd happens where every first boot my screen just
blinks and endlessly repeats some more or less random part of the boot
process (always right after initializing the usb subsystem). And every
second boot after that I can boot, but still get a lot of screen
blinking and lines of garbage printed out as if there is a key stuck on
my keyboard sending very foreign keycodes all the time.
So I guess that is the reason, and I just tried to unplug all my usb
devices (except keyboard and mouse) and rebooted and everything works
fine now. So it seems this bug is in fact caused by some error in the
kernels usb subsystem that is triggered by one of my usb devices.
** Changed in: util-linux (Ubuntu)
Status: New => Invalid
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/998437
Title:
Can't log in on a tty
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