Dear all,

does anybody know what is the maximal length of usernames on Solairs
6,7,8 and above?

Once, I was told that they are limited to 8 characters. Is this
true?

Thanks for any explanation!

Kind regards,

Lukas
--
ruf at rawip dot org

On Tuesday 18 November 2003 9:20 pm in comp.sys.sun.admin Lukas Ruf wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> does anybody know what is the maximal length of usernames on Solairs
> 6,7,8 and above?
>
> Once, I was told that they are limited to 8 characters. Is this
> true?

Thus is not a Solaris issue, it is a Unix standard.
Only the first 8 characters of a username, group, or password
are significant. Everything else should be ignored.

Be warned that janesmith is the same as janesmit

Using more than 8 characters is unsupported and often untested.
Breaking the rule can tickle all manner of obscure bugs.
For example, in HPUX 10.20 a long group name caused backups
to mysteriously and silently fail.

If your lusers want a long email name use a mail alias.

--
My real address is crn (at) netunix (dot) com
WARNING all messages containing attachments or html will be silently
deleted. Send only plain text.

On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 22:55:09 +0000, Chris Newport
<me@see-my-sig.invalid> wrote:

>On Tuesday 18 November 2003 9:20 pm in comp.sys.sun.admin Lukas Ruf wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> does anybody know what is the maximal length of usernames on Solairs
>> 6,7,8 and above?
>>
>> Once, I was told that they are limited to 8 characters. Is this
>> true?
>
>Thus is not a Solaris issue, it is a Unix standard.
>Only the first 8 characters of a username, group, or password
>are significant. Everything else should be ignored.
>
>Be warned that janesmith is the same as janesmit
>
>Using more than 8 characters is unsupported and often untested.
>Breaking the rule can tickle all manner of obscure bugs.
>For example, in HPUX 10.20 a long group name caused backups
>to mysteriously and silently fail.
>
>If your lusers want a long email name use a mail alias.

Why are you calling them lusers? Shouldn't the system accommodate the
user instead of the user accommodating the system?

Josh

On Tuesday 18 November 2003 11:19 pm in comp.sys.sun.admin Josh McKee wrote:

> On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 22:55:09 +0000, Chris Newport
> <me@see-my-sig.invalid> wrote:
>
>>On Tuesday 18 November 2003 9:20 pm in comp.sys.sun.admin Lukas Ruf wrote:
>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> does anybody know what is the maximal length of usernames on Solairs
>>> 6,7,8 and above?
>>>
>>> Once, I was told that they are limited to 8 characters. Is this
>>> true?
>>
>>Thus is not a Solaris issue, it is a Unix standard.
>>Only the first 8 characters of a username, group, or password
>>are significant. Everything else should be ignored.
>>
>>Be warned that janesmith is the same as janesmit
>>
>>Using more than 8 characters is unsupported and often untested.
>>Breaking the rule can tickle all manner of obscure bugs.
>>For example, in HPUX 10.20 a long group name caused backups
>>to mysteriously and silently fail.
>>
>>If your lusers want a long email name use a mail alias.
>
> Why are you calling them lusers? Shouldn't the system accommodate the
> user instead of the user accommodating the system?

Patience, young grasshopper.
Enlightenment will come with experience.

--
My real address is crn (at) netunix (dot) com
WARNING all messages containing attachments or html will be silently
deleted. Send only plain text.

In article <e6alrvkhk3446jc15q43rqbblk9578kvp0@4ax.com>,
Josh McKee <jtmckee@rm-bogus-ac.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 22:55:09 +0000, Chris Newport
> <me@see-my-sig.invalid> wrote:
>
> >On Tuesday 18 November 2003 9:20 pm in comp.sys.sun.admin Lukas Ruf wrote:
> >
> >> Dear all,
> >>
> >> does anybody know what is the maximal length of usernames on Solairs
> >> 6,7,8 and above?
> >>
> >> Once, I was told that they are limited to 8 characters. Is this
> >> true?
> >
> >Thus is not a Solaris issue, it is a Unix standard.
> >Only the first 8 characters of a username, group, or password
> >are significant. Everything else should be ignored.
> >
> >Be warned that janesmith is the same as janesmit
> >
> >Using more than 8 characters is unsupported and often untested.
> >Breaking the rule can tickle all manner of obscure bugs.
> >For example, in HPUX 10.20 a long group name caused backups
> >to mysteriously and silently fail.
> >
> >If your lusers want a long email name use a mail alias.
>
> Why are you calling them lusers? Shouldn't the system accommodate the
> user instead of the user accommodating the system?

In this case, the users must accomodate the system, since it's a hard
limit. If you think it's cost effective to spend time modifying Solaris
and all the parts affected by this to accomedate usernames, passwords
and groups > 8 characters, then by all means have fun.

I, personally, like to stay within standards. The lowest common
denominator for this namespace is 8 characters. Some vendors support
larger names, some only support 8 characters.

YMMV.

--
DeeDee, don't press that button! DeeDee! NO! Dee...

Lukas Ruf <ruf_block_spam@rawip.org> writes in comp.sys.sun.admin:
|does anybody know what is the maximal length of usernames on Solairs
|6,7,8 and above?
|Once, I was told that they are limited to 8 characters. Is this
|true?

8 is the officially supported maximum length. Longer ones mostly work,
but there are various known bugs and issues with them.

--
__________________________________________________ ______________________
Alan Coopersmith alanc@alum.calberkeley.org
http://www.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU/~alanc/ aka: Alan.Coopersmith@Sun.COM
Working for, but definitely not speaking for, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

me@see-my-sig.invalid writes:
>On Tuesday 18 November 2003 9:20 pm in comp.sys.sun.admin Lukas Ruf wrote:
>
>> does anybody know what is the maximal length of usernames on Solairs
>> 6,7,8 and above?
>>
>> Once, I was told that they are limited to 8 characters. Is this
>> true?
>
>Thus is not a Solaris issue, it is a Unix standard.
>

And then in a later post "me@see-my-sig.invalid" writes that some
Unix implementations support longer names, others don't.

Solaris can be said to support long usernames because nothing in
the base OS breaks on them. The "bugs" which people refer to are
almost always things like information in the output of ps not
being in nice columns, as with short names. I call these annoyances
rather than bugs.

Some other programs (that you download from the Internet rather than
come with Solaris) may break, but I haven't run into any yet.

It doesn't have to be a problem, as long as you can live with the
annoyances that long usernames produce.

(note I've only commented on usernames, not on passwords or other things)

-Greg
--
Do NOT reply via e-mail.
Reply in the newsgroup.

Greg Andrews wrote:
> me@see-my-sig.invalid writes:
> >On Tuesday 18 November 2003 9:20 pm in comp.sys.sun.admin Lukas Ruf
> >wrote:
> >
> >> does anybody know what is the maximal length of usernames on
> >> Solairs 6,7,8 and above?
> >>
>
> Solaris can be said to support long usernames because nothing in
> the base OS breaks on them. The "bugs" which people refer to are
> almost always things like information in the output of ps not being
> in nice columns, as with short names. I call these annoyances
> rather than bugs.

Thanks for the clarification!

I do not care about cosmetic annoyances when it comes to system
reliability and stability.

>
> Some other programs (that you download from the Internet rather
> than come with Solaris) may break, but I haven't run into any yet.
>

As long as the base system -- i.e. more specifically: the kernel,
mountd, automountd, nis+ etc. -- is running stable, I am fine with it!

> It doesn't have to be a problem, as long as you can live with the
> annoyances that long usernames produce.
>

I can, definitely! ;-)

> (note I've only commented on usernames, not on passwords or other
> things)
>

what's the issue there?

Thanks for any further enlightenment!

--
Lukas Ruf <ruf at rawip dot org>

Josh McKee wrote:

> On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 22:55:09 +0000, Chris Newport
> <me@see-my-sig.invalid> wrote:
>
>>
>>If your lusers want a long email name use a mail alias.
>
> Why are you calling them lusers? Shouldn't the system accommodate the
> user instead of the user accommodating the system?
>

<offtopic>An old BOFH-ism, which I think goes back to a hacked report
program (similar to finger, I expect) on an ITS system. It went from
saying "x users logged in" when you pressed C-z, to saying "x losers logged
in". Some users, apparently, didn't like being called losers, so the
compromise "lusers" was reached. It stuck.

ISTR the help command on ITS was duly renamed "luser", too </offtopic>

I've just gone in and hacked the passwd stuff on a passing Solaris 8
machine. If you have a luser with a stupid name (such as 'ihavelongname'),
then they *can* log in and *can* change their password. I did so and the
updated passwd entry doesn't get truncated. What you don't seem able to
do, however, is to log in as 'ihavelon'; the 8-character truncated version
of 'ihavelongname'.

*HOWEVER*, that's not to say you should do it. Who knows how big the buffer
is in programs such as login, passwd, etc; usernames are designed to be 8
characters long and one shouldn't rock the boat. Also, who knows what kind
of problems it could lead to should you require your Solaris systems to
interoperate with anyone else's UNIX.
--
Graham Lee
Wadham College
Oxford

On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 17:33:51 -0800, "Michael Vilain
<vilain@spamcop.net>" wrote:

>In article <e6alrvkhk3446jc15q43rqbblk9578kvp0@4ax.com>,
> Josh McKee <jtmckee@rm-bogus-ac.net> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 22:55:09 +0000, Chris Newport
>> <me@see-my-sig.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> >On Tuesday 18 November 2003 9:20 pm in comp.sys.sun.admin Lukas Ruf wrote:
>> >
>> >> Dear all,
>> >>
>> >> does anybody know what is the maximal length of usernames on Solairs
>> >> 6,7,8 and above?
>> >>
>> >> Once, I was told that they are limited to 8 characters. Is this
>> >> true?
>> >
>> >Thus is not a Solaris issue, it is a Unix standard.
>> >Only the first 8 characters of a username, group, or password
>> >are significant. Everything else should be ignored.
>> >
>> >Be warned that janesmith is the same as janesmit
>> >
>> >Using more than 8 characters is unsupported and often untested.
>> >Breaking the rule can tickle all manner of obscure bugs.
>> >For example, in HPUX 10.20 a long group name caused backups
>> >to mysteriously and silently fail.
>> >
>> >If your lusers want a long email name use a mail alias.
>>
>> Why are you calling them lusers? Shouldn't the system accommodate the
>> user instead of the user accommodating the system?
>
>In this case, the users must accomodate the system, since it's a hard
>limit. If you think it's cost effective to spend time modifying Solaris
>and all the parts affected by this to accomedate usernames, passwords
>and groups > 8 characters, then by all means have fun.

The problem I have is Chris' portrayal of the user as a loser because
they wish to use something more descriptive. I fail to see why that is
an unreasonable expectation and warrants the SA calling their
customers losers. Computers are supposed to work for us, not the other
way around.

>I, personally, like to stay within standards. The lowest common
>denominator for this namespace is 8 characters. Some vendors support
>larger names, some only support 8 characters.

And you wonder why Windows is the dominant platform. It may be
technically inferior to UNIX. But it appears to accommodate the user
in the areas that are most important to them.

Josh