From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Jun 20 18:45:46 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id SAA04771 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 20 Jun 1996 18:45:46 -0700 (PDT) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA04763 for ; Thu, 20 Jun 1996 18:45:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: from msmith@localhost by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.6.12/8.6.9) id LAA08107; Fri, 21 Jun 1996 11:48:22 +0930 From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199606210218.LAA08107@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: Longer usernames? To: tom@sdf.com (Tom Samplonius) Date: Fri, 21 Jun 1996 11:48:21 +0930 (CST) Cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: from "Tom Samplonius" at Jun 20, 96 11:26:52 am MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Tom Samplonius stands accused of saying: > > > > > > What is the general consensus on usernames longer than 8 chars? I've > > > been doing some testing on a -stable system with 16 character usernames, > > > and everything seems to work ok. > > > > NIS won't. > > Really? NIS supports databases of arbitrary key-data pairs. Keys can > be longer than 8 characters. > > On FreeBSD systems, long usernames in /var/yp/master.passwd propogate to > slaves just fine, and if the NIS clients have been built to handle longer > usernames, those users can login too. That's the problem though; other hosts that _don't_ support longer usernames won't be able to interoperate with FreeBSD's NIS. We might as well call it NIS++ then 8) The whole idea behind doing NIS at all is to be able to work in a mixed environment. I appreciate your basic idea though; it would be nice to come up with a solution that didn't involve a complete rebuild to swap from one to the other. > > > Also, I recently noticed that BSDI 2.1 supports 16 character usernames > > > too (UT_NAMESIZE is 16). This means that BSDI 2.1 bins that access wtmp, > > > utmp, etc will not work under FreeBSD. > > > > What do they do about NIS? Truncate the usernames? Bad bad bad. > > BSDI 2.1 doesn't have NIS. Ah. > Tom -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039 [[ ]] Collector of old Unix hardware. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[