From owner-freebsd-questions Sat May 20 12:44:00 1995 Return-Path: questions-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id MAA06952 for questions-outgoing; Sat, 20 May 1995 12:44:00 -0700 Received: from cs.weber.edu (cs.weber.edu [137.190.16.16]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with SMTP id MAA06945 for ; Sat, 20 May 1995 12:43:59 -0700 Received: by cs.weber.edu (4.1/SMI-4.1.1) id AA06319; Sat, 20 May 95 13:37:13 MDT From: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert) Message-Id: <9505201937.AA06319@cs.weber.edu> Subject: Re: MAXIMUM user name length? To: procecorjb@Vir.com (Robert Burns) Date: Sat, 20 May 95 13:37:12 MDT Cc: questions@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: from "Robert Burns" at May 20, 95 02:54:09 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4dev PL52] Sender: questions-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > What is the limitation in a user name length? 8 characters. > Adduser and vipw allow me to enter a user name of 10 chars > but it is not recognized by either the chpass command or the > login prompt. When I reduce the length to 8 characters, everthing > is ok. Is this a limitation? It is. > Can it be changed? If you are willing to recompile all tools that use getpwent() and related routines after changing sys/param.h. This includes xterm. At the same time, you will be breaking NIS interoperability with older systems, since 8 characters is a historical limit that will still be present on other machines (for instance, Sun machines). When an ISP sets up, typically they will have several machines and an address rotor using the newer bind code to attempt to balance the system load. Also, typically, there will be an NIS database in common between the machines, so that logins will work. If you are soing this in support of users as an ISP instead of on a whim, you may want to reconsider the advisability of making the change. Terry Lambert terry@cs.weber.edu --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.