[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#493230: manpage of adduser/useradd does not mention how long a username can be

[Michelle Konzack]

Salut Nicolas François,

t'est français?

Sorry for the late answer but I was not @home for some weeks...

Am 2008-08-15 15:54:08, schrieb Nicolas François:
> You tried to add user, ass1234567890123456789012345678901234567890, which
> tried to create a group with the same name.
> This one has more than 32 characters.

All of the groups are 7-10 characters...

> On Debian, the limit for group names is 32 chars (I will fix the manpage).

OK<seufz>

> The naming policy is also very relaxed.
> 
> With the recommended policy ([a-z_][a-z0-9_-]*[$]?), this makes something
> like 2E+50 possible usernames.
> With the Debian relaxed naming policy (^[^-:\s][^:\s]*$), this should be
> something like 5E+76 possible usernames.

But such user names are not very usefull/intuitive...

> This might be a problem if the French government want to give a name to
> each particles in the Universe (1E+80), but should still be sufficient for
> some time for human beings.

They are preparing the world domination (the USA have already lost...)

> Note: You will be limited to 2^64 (2E+19) UIDs anyway.

Shit...  when do we get 2^256?

> I think the problem in on your naming policy (abc<decimal number>).
> Using hexadecimal numbers (or higher base) could some your issue.

We are using logical names for the logins...

> This was fixed on Debian in 2004. Both user and group names need to be
> less than 32 chars. I will update the manpage.

OK, thanks!

> IMHO, the restrictions come from the logging to utmp.
> If you want that restriction to be removed, you should indicate more
> clearly what you want to do. (and why the 2^64 UID limit is not the real
> restriction for your use case).

As I have written above, we are using logical names which are  a  little
bit longer since we need several 100.000...

No one would remember cryptical hexadecimal logins or such...

Thanks, Greetings and nice Day/Evening
    Michelle Konzack
    Systemadministrator
    24V Electronic Engineer
    Tamay Dogan Network
    Debian GNU/Linux Consultant


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