Re: Usernames > 16 characters

[tim <tim@xxxxxxxx>]

Matthew Dillon wrote:

> :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.

I think bumping both values would make sense.   I remember punting on a 
migration from IRIX to BSD 3.X because of the 8 character username specs.

I can see a need for both to be larger.  I can't see the username be > 
32.

Are you referring to UT_HOSTSIZE ?  That should probably be 32 also.

Also, should MAXLOGNAME either be specific tied to UT_NAMESIZE?  Or is 
there a POSIX reason for the seperation?

tim