[NBLUG/talk] Hostname, username lengths

[Dustin Mollo]

On Wed, May 14, 2003 at 07:47:48PM -0700, ME wrote:
> Even when you can have a username with more t han 8 characters, you will
> probably want to stick with 8 characters for a username or less. This
> makes interactions with other *NIX systems "work" without username
> translations between hosts with things like NFS.
> 
> "Old" *nix systems had a limit of 8 characters (max) per username while
> "newer" *nix systems allow for longer lengths (32 chars?). I am not sure
> if more than 32 chars are possible, and some applications may not like
> usernames that are longer than 8 chars, but still less than 33.

i'm only going to speak to the username issue, as that's all i really know
anything about.  most, if not all, modern unix and unix-like operating
systems support larger-than-8-character usernames.  i remember it being a
feature of hp-ux a while ago, and solaris has supported it since solaris 7
(according to my man page, oct 16, 1997.)

i don't think you'll find many mainstream versions out there that don't
feature large usernames and/or group names.  like mike points out, however,
application support (at least apps that the os vendor doesn't supply with
the os) can be questionable.  i'd imagine, though, that considering how long
this functionality has been around, most app vendors would support this.

i've been trying to get some folks at my office to start thinking of
usernames longer than 8 characters.  with the exeption of our remedy ticket
system (which runs on solaris 6) and our vaxen, all of our operating systems
support larger-than-8-character usernames, and i'm pretty sure all of our
apps do as well (with a few possible homebrew exceptions.) when you have
well over two thousand employees and someplace around ten thousand students,
your username space fills up rather fast...well...the username space that
contains meaningfull and easy-to-remember usenames, at least.  ;)

-dustin