From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Jan 24 17:06:11 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id RAA07317 for questions-outgoing; Wed, 24 Jan 1996 17:06:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id RAA07310 for ; Wed, 24 Jan 1996 17:06:07 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id SAA01405; Wed, 24 Jan 1996 18:03:16 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199601250103.SAA01405@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Login Name Length To: scrappy@ki.net (Marc G. Fournier) Date: Wed, 24 Jan 1996 18:03:16 -0700 (MST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, randyk@ccsales.com, questions@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: from "Marc G. Fournier" at Jan 23, 96 10:45:31 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk > > On Tue, 23 Jan 1996, Terry Lambert wrote: > > > > What limits the length of user logins to 8 characters and how might this > > > be changed? We need 15 or more. > > > > Modify the header file and rebuild the world. > > > > Note hat you will break interoperability with standard wire protocols, > > like YP, if you change the length of the name field. If you can live > > with that, and you have enough room to rebuild the world, go for it. > > > > Just curious, but if the machine I did this on were only a > ypclient, I would assume that there wouldn't be any problems, as the server > would still only send an 8char userid. Is this a correct assumption, and > if not, why not? It's not because the structure size will have changed. You will need to define a seperate structure for wire format and convert it on the way in if you wish to do this type of thing. Probably this would be a good generic thing for YP in any case; I could see wanting to put client code on a non-UNIX box at some time in the future (like Windows95 or WindowsNT), and the structure definition should be local to the YP implementation for that. This would mean a little work and some extra copying on your part; I don't know if anyone has already done this work -- I don't think so, since it would still make the hacked box unusable as a YP master or slave (as opposed to client). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.