Re: What is the maximal length of usernames on Solaris?

From: grog (greg_at_or.y)
Date: 12/28/03 

Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 10:41:40 -0500

In article <0vrtuv8jjhb5ci080ne1an287mjnm6k5cp@4ax.com>, jtmckee@rm-
bogus-ac.net says...
> What you fail to understand is that I am not advocating that you
> ignore the current 8 character limit and give users a longer user ID.
> What I am proposing is increasing the 8 character limit to something
> more reasonable. What is reasonable? I don't know but 8 characters
> appears to be insufficient in many cases.

No matter what length a username is, that length will not be
satisfactory for some reason. Eight letters. is too short, and the
usernames are too cryptic? Fine, let's make the length twenty letters.
Whoops, now users cannot remember their usernames! Damn! Okay, let's
make the length twelve letters. But that's too short for people with
really long names! (Round and round we go, where it stops nobody
knows.)

> So we shouldn't work to improve the system? That's fine...but don't be
> surprised when people prefer Windows of UNIX.

People who whine about petty *** such as how long a username can be
should just forget all about any *nix system and stick with Windows.
Those people are just going to 1001 more trivial, shallow so-called
problems to moan about on a *nix system.

There are far more important things to worry about than the fact that
your username has to be "jmckee" instead of "josh_mckee". I mean,
c'mon. Next we'll hear moaning about how *nix uses a forward slash in
directory paths, but Windows uses a backward slash. How awful!
Somebody call Ashcroft and beg him to make it go away!

> Windows is giving the end users what *they* want. That's one of the
> reasons that it's been so successful.

It's a question of what users -need-, not what they want. They "want"
the entire world handed to them on a silver platter. They seldom know
what they really need. I think Windows is successful for two main
reasons: (a) Nothing else is mainstream because Microsoft has pretty
much monopolized the PC OS market, and (b) It has a very low learning
curve, which is a polite way of saying it appeals to morons.

> Where did I say that users should be allowed to arbitrarily choose
> their own user IDs? Isn't using their first initial and full last name
> a procedure for creating user IDs? Isn't using their full first and
> last name a procedure for creating user IDs?

Oh, but I thought you wanted to give users what they WANT. They usually
don't really like the usernames that system admins dream up for them.

But I have a solution that will lay this whole issue to rest right here
and now. It will allow usernames of ANY length on a *nix system, yet
still comply with the eight character length restriction. That's right,
boys and girls, ol' Greg has the answer that will make EVERYBODY happy!
Well, everybody except the system admins... But anyway, here's what you
do: We know that *nix focuses on the first eight characters of a
username, right? You can punch in a ten-character username and *nix
will ignore the last two characters. (That's really where the eight-
character limit first comes into play.) This means that you could write
a policy for the system admins that says they are to assign usernames of
up to, say, 15 characters but that the first 8 characters must not match
any other username. Now the users will get nice, long usernames and the
system won't get confused! YES!! Happy, happy, joy, joy! (You might
want to move and change your phone number before the system admins come
to your house and burn it down.)