Username length inconsistencies.
What's the limit on username lengths? I poked around but couldn't
find any indication. I know that some programs make assumptions
(yuck), but I didn't know what that usual assumption was.
For example, repquota chops off the name at 10 characters to fit in
the column, so if you want to use that tool to get quota info, you
must stick to < 11 (possibly < 10 if you want to be able to have a
space between the first two columns) characters for a username.
However, adduser (and the underlying useradd) don't enforce a length
limit that would protect you from this.
IMO this means something is broken. Either there should be a hard
limit which adduser enforces, and programs need to be able to handle
that maximum length, or programs should provide an interface that's
name length independent. Given that historically unix programs don't
like to use dynamic allocation for this sort of thing, I'm guessing
that there's going to be a hard limit.
Once we figure out what we think the right answer is, I think we
should work to make all the programs consistent with it.
Thanks
--
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu>
PGP fingerprint = E8 0E 0D 04 F5 21 A0 94 53 2B 97 F5 D6 4E 39 30
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