Re: Maximum characters in username

[Chris Gray <cgray@nowonder.com>]

On Tue, Jul 25, 2000 at 11:03:05AM -0700, Matthew Thompson wrote:
> Hello, everyone,
> 
> Ok, here's my silly, newbie-esque question for the week:  how many
> characters are allowed in a username?  I'm under the impression that it is
> 8, but 'adduser' allows you to create users with more characters than
> that.

Since the kernel does not know anything about usernames (only uids), it
does not seem that there should be a limit.  Indeed, I put the following
in /etc/passwd (don't worry it's gone now)

asdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdf::1010:1010::/:/bin/sh

It was quite easy to log in if I counted correctly.

$ su asdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdf
Password:
$ whoami
asdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdfasdf

It seems to me that the maximum length of the username is thus the same
as the maximum amount of memory you can allocate.  

Cheers,
Chris

-- 
pick, pack, pock, puck: like drops of water in a fountain falling
softly in the brimming bowl.