Date: Wed, 29 May 1996 21:42:28 -0500 (CDT) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: rb@gid.co.uk (Bob Bishop) Cc: randy@zyzzyva.com, hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 8 character login limit Message-ID: <199605300242.VAA02832@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <v01510104add2827678aa@[194.32.164.2]> from "Bob Bishop" at May 29, 96 11:48:48 pm
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> At 1:01 pm 29/5/96, Randy Terbush wrote: > >Can anyone shed some light on the reasons for this limit? "Historical". Given that people have traditionally wanted to break this limit for aesthetic reasons, it's never been of great importance to break such a basic fundamental parameter in UNIX. > >After a quick look, it would appear that the only thing that > >trips on this limit is 'login'. I have not checked the getpw*() > >functions. Check your applications. > >Is it out of the question to remove this restriction? > > > >Comments? > > A while ago, I had occasion to do a closely-related exercise to increase > the significant password length on one of the mainstream commercial Unixes > (no names, no litigation (I hope!) but it came from BSD4.x originally). You > really wouldn't believe the ramifications. Unless the code has cleaned > itself up a lot in the meanwhile I'd have to rate this as quite a Big Deal. It breaks Lots Of Things. Including various portions of the OS where the "8" constant is assumed or coded without use of a macro, or an integral part of a protocol (NIS, etc). Including precompiled applications. Including most legacy code. Printf formats with %8s in them. char uname[8]'s. All sort of assumptions. Sound like fun yet? Folks I have talked to generally consider this either to be an exercise for the bored, desperate, or stupid. Since I have never actually heard a good reason for someone to want to do this, I have a little bit of a problem picturing why it becomes such an issue every once in a while :-) The not-good reason people always seem to try to give is "e-mail addresses", but the reality is that Sendmail already can deal with it if you want it to. I can map Joe.Greco@ns.sol.net -> jgreco@ns.sol.net for inbound and jgreco@*.sol.net -> Joe.Greco@ns.sol.net for outbound It's not hard. I have a real hard time picturing any other need for this... (not to say that a valid reason doesn't exist, but..) To be honest, FreeBSD (and 4.4BSD in general) has done a good job of isolating a lot of this and using UT_NAMESIZE. ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/546-7968
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