v4.02 no longer allows first letter of user name to be a number

[7im]

Just updated to VMWare Player v4.02 after tiring of the many prompts.  Tried to create a new VM.  My user name of "7im" worked just fine in previous versions but does not work now.  I tried mi7, and that works, so not a character issue.  Seems like a lame programming oversight or lame new feature.

[gszoniec]

As I suppose you used field in a wizard to automatically create

user in guest OS, so try to ommit this field and create user after

installing. What kind of OS have you tried to install? Maybe guest

OS doesn't allow you to create such a user, try previous OS where

it worked/works or another kind of OS.

[mdunn-vmware]

What goes wrong exactly?  I only have the WS Tech Preview handy, and I tried installing with that user name and didn't see a problem.

[7im]

On a fully patched version of Windows XP 32 bit...

Launch VMWare Player. (4.0.2 build-591240)

Create a New Virtual Machine

Browse to disk .iso of Ubuntu 12.04 beta.

Next

Entered full user name, User name: 7im and password 2 times.

Next.

Error window pops... "You have entered an invalide User name.  A User name must only consist of lowercase characters, numbers 0 to 9 or dashes."

...with an OK button.

Seems either the message is wrong, or VMWare has a problem.

And just to prove this is a NEW programming bug, I went back and tried to create a 2nd copy of my Ubuntu v11.10 VM.  I have a working VM of v11.10 with 7im as a user name from a previous version of Player.  Taking the same steps with 11.10 creates the same error when using Player v4.02.

4.02 is the problem, IMO.

Have you tried it, and had it succeed?

[RDPetruska]

Have you tried NOT using the Easy Install - just select "I will install an OS later" at that point in the Wizard.  Especially for Linux guests, Easy Install ends up messing up the default partitions - not leaving enough room for some Linux-based guests.

[7im]

No, I have not tried that, although it probably works.  But I shouldn't have try that either.  It works in previous versions, does not work now.

Note this is simply a bug report, sorry if I posted in the wrong place.  I do not need help finishing the VM install of 12.04.  As you can see from the attached picture in the previous post, I have worked around the name problem and finished the install of 12.04.

Also, the "Not enough room" is a fake (misleading) error message as well.

Defrag your hard drive, and/or select the option to keep one big partition.  The "not enough room" error will go away and allow the install to continue.

I had the same error come up using the wizard trying to install Fedora 16. Then I defragged and used the wizard setting for one big partition, and the error went away.  Either or both solve the problem, but this should probably get copied to a new topic.  There is enough room on the HD (I had over 100 GB free), just not enough room in the first piece of the split partitions the wizard tried to use. .  YMMV.

[mdunn-vmware]

That restriction is there because the unattended installer in older versions of Ubuntu (8.x) requires that the account name start with a lowercase letter.  The error message is wrong, but that's a separate problem.

[7im]

A separate problem soon to be fixed?

And this new "feature" is documented in the release notes or change log somewhere?

Why add a restriction for an OS so many versions out of date?

Sorry, logic often gets the best of me...  too little, too late, and ruins it for future versions.