From owner-freebsd-isp Tue Dec 3 21:35:41 1996 Return-Path: owner-isp Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA07312 for isp-outgoing; Tue, 3 Dec 1996 21:35:41 -0800 (PST) Received: (from wpaul@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id VAA07306; Tue, 3 Dec 1996 21:35:40 -0800 (PST) From: Bill Paul Message-Id: <199612040535.VAA07306@freefall.freebsd.org> Subject: Re: your mail To: dg@root.com Date: Tue, 3 Dec 1996 21:35:40 -0800 (PST) Cc: freebsd-isp, bradley@dunn.org In-Reply-To: <199612032110.NAA04240@root.com> from "David Greenman" at Dec 3, 96 01:10:17 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-isp@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > Hi. > > We have a BSD/OS box that we are going to be switching over to FreeBSD. > There are about 100 logins on the BSD/OS box that are over 8 characters in > length. > > After thinking this over, I have decided that getting all of those people > to change their login names would be a tech. support nightmare. So that is > not an option. The long names must stay. (Yes I know about sendmail > aliases; no that is not an option because having the login name different > from the email address is also a support nightmare.) > > >From discussions held on this matter in the past, my understanding is that > UT_NAMESIZE in and MAXLOGNAME in are the numbers to > change. So I change both of those numbers to 16, make the world, and hope > everything works. Any caveats? > > I know this breaks NIS interoperability, but NIS between FreeBSD boxes > will still work, correct? > > Thanks. > > - -BD NIS will still work, yes. The username is not copied to any buffers that might overflow (it's actually used in-place). Technically, NIS itself doesn't care about the length of the username: the only limitation is that records (keys or data) can't be longer that 1024 bytes. Whether or not the rest of the OS can deal with it is another matter. -Bill