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Subject: [suse-security] length of a login
From: Simone Grabstein (gsimonrocketmail.com)
Date: Mon Jul 03 2000 - 09:42:51 CDT

Hi guys.

Once upon a time...we were limited to 8 characters for
users' logins (and apparently still limited to 8
characters for passwords).

I currently manage a few servers were I had to
implement longer usernames. Now, I get repeated
notices form SuSE seccheck scripts about user logins
having more than 8 characters.
I browsed through man pages, faqs and howtos - but I
could hardly find any reference to this issue.

The only reference I could actually find was an SDB
article: "Length of a Login" (SDB-ke_loginname).
In this article it is stated - for example - that "You
cannot use useradd to add users with a login name
longer than 8 letters " - which is not true as of SuSE
Linux 6.4...
I'm not having problems with POP access either. The
only annoying thing is that using "ls" in long listing
format I get usernames truncated to 8 characters (but
I get correct UID with "ls -ln").

The article also states: "Lots of programs restrict
accounts to 8 letters and cannot handle long names".
1) Which programs?
2) Should I worry about using logins longer than 8
characters?
3) And what about using some commonly used characters
(as underscores or dashes)?

Thanks for answering,

                       Simon.

=====
=====================
Dr. Simone Grabstein
gsimonrocketmail.com
=====================

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