Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 09:54:05 -0600 (MDT) From: Marc Slemko <marcs@znep.com> To: Narvi <narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: 8 character login limit?! Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.95.961015094520.10994B-100000@alive.ampr.ab.ca> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.91.961015174107.1724A-100000@haldjas.folklore.ee>
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On Tue, 15 Oct 1996, Narvi wrote: > > GROSS HACK ALERT > > > > 8-character programs must have login names limited to 8-character. > > the login name must be unique in the first 8-characters > > add an arg to the end of the system calls > > a pointer to a string, the longer login name, if any goes there. > > any program that works now will continue to work > > any program that has been modifid to use longer login names > > can do so. > > There are only one kind of 8-character programs - the programs written by > commercial software houses not releasing their source. In all other cases > it can be fixed by #if defined(FreeBSD) && defined (LONG_LOGINNAMES) No, in all other cases it can be defined by looking at an existing define, most likely UT_NAMESIZE. No need to do any FreeBSD specific defines since the problem (and solution) isn't FreeBSD specific. For the commercial software w/o source perspective, most of the companise that write for FreeBSD specifically should be nice enough to change their program. Most of the others either fall into the BSD/OS category, where they need to handle long usernames anyway, or the Linux catagory where... umm... it looks like most distributions have an 8 char limit, but there may well be some that don't. From a Redhat 3.x utmp.h: /* size of user name */ #if 1 #define UT_LINESIZE 12 #define UT_NAMESIZE 8 #define UT_HOSTSIZE 16 #else #define UT_LINESIZE 16 #define UT_NAMESIZE 16 #define UT_HOSTSIZE 256 #endif Looks like they are perhaps toying with it but there is something holding them back.
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