Re: Usernames > 16 characters

[Matthew Dillon <dillon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

:Any chance Dragonfly will handle usernames > 16 characters?  Or is this 
:something that many people feel should be done with something like PAM?
:

    Well, you have to ask yourself "larger then 16 characters for what
    purpose" ?  If for email purposes then the appropriate avenue is to
    create mail aliases, for example.  An account name as an operating 
    system tracked entity should not have an unbounded size, otherwise 
    it becomes too ungainly to administer and report on (in logs and so 
    forth).

    That said, it is obvious that 8 was too small and so it was bumped up
    to 16.  The question is would it be reasonable to bump it up to, say,
    32?  I can't imagine making it larger then 32 but I can see some valid
    arguments to going from 16 to 32 and perhaps bumping up the hostname
    field in utmp.h at the same time.

    Some recent names sitting in my inbox:

              1         2         3
    012345678901234567890123456789012
    Matthew_Dillon  |		    |
    Eric_J_Chet     |		    |
    Julian_Elischer |		    |
    Kent_Ibbetson   |		    |
    Jeroen_Ruigrok_van_der_Werven   |
    Sander_Vesik    |		    |
    Hiten_Pandya    |		    |
    Garance_A_Drosihn		    |
    M_Warner_Losh   |		    |

    So there's a good argument for going to 32.

					-Matt
					Matthew Dillon 
					<dillon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>