Date: Sat, 20 Sep 1997 14:22:21 +0100 From: David Malone <dwmalone@maths.tcd.ie> To: Studded <Studded@dal.net> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: >8 char usernames going into 2.2.5? Message-ID: <9709201422.aa15726@salmon.maths.tcd.ie> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 20 Sep 1997 02:33:46 PDT." <199709200933.CAA27068@mail.san.rr.com>
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> If I have a system that only allows 8 char usernames, and someone offers me > a system that allows 16, what's going to break if *I* stick with the 8 > chars I've always used? (And does this same argument hold true for the > packages?) Both utmp and wtmp have a 8 characters allocaked for usernames, and this number is compiled into all programs that read or write these files. The structure in this file should corrispond exactly to the structure detailed in utmp (5). If you change the size of the structure all these programs will break. These programs are likely to include people's local accounting scripts and the like. Breaking these would not be acceptable to many people. > Also, aren't these few people with the systems you're > talking about who are smart enough to cobble the things together in > the first place also smart enough to change it *back* to 8 if the > change is so easy? 2.2.5 is more of an upgrade - 3.0 will be a whole new release. 2.2.5 as it stands is essentially a binary "drop in" replacement for 2.2.? - the only binaries that I can think of that are not interchangeable are kernel related ones. > worked." However the rc* changes that are being made in the 2.2 branch > seem like a pretty big change to me, much bigger than what we're > talking about with the length of usernames. If you install via the "make world" route you probably won't have to deal with the rc.* changes. I've done several 2.2-STABLE upgrades, and haven't touched the rc.* files yet and everything still works fine. I suspect the same is true of the sysinstall upgrade route, as it doesn't change much (anything?) in /etc. David.
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