"chown user.group file" doesn't work; only "user:group" (colon instead of period) works. I don't know if this change is intentional or if it is there just because the upstream default changed. If the change is permanent, then there should definately be something in the the release notes about this. There are numerous RPMs (utempter and at to name a couple I noticed) that use "chown user.group" syntax in scriptlets like %post. Also, IIRC the reason for not allowing "." in user/group names was because of chown, so if the change is permanent, that restriction should be removed. Filed against devel because I noticed it while updating FC2 test1 to development tree (so I don't know if it was in test1).
*** Bug 116571 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
See the documentation: -- Some older scripts may still use `.' in place of the `:' separator. POSIX 1003.1-2001 (*note Standards conformance::) does not allow that, but you may be able to work around the compatibility problems by setting `_POSIX2_VERSION=199209' in your environment. New scripts should avoid the use of `.' because GNU `chown' may fail if OWNER contains `.' characters. -- The colon separator has been the recommended syntax for many releases. Time to fix instances of the old syntax so we can move on. One reason for this, aside from POSIX, is the possibility of having user account names containing '.', currently not allowed. It would be great to remove this restriction. Yes, it needs to be mentioned in the release notes. I'll keep this bug report open for a while, until the packages whose scriptlets still use '.' as separator have been rebuilt. I have fixed as many as I could find in CVS.
Update: it turns out that LSB requires chown to accept '.' still. :-( Message sent to bug-coreutils to see if this behaviour is permanent.
*** Bug 116632 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Looks like this has been reverted in upstream coreutils.
*** Bug 116690 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 116694 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 116695 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 116696 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***