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.