[clug] Username

[Eyal Lebedinsky]

On 20/09/16 03:42, Bryan Kilgallin wrote:
> I received a hand-me-down laptop. Set up with a simple and guessable username. So now I want to replace the latter.
>
> I recall that passwords were supposed to be strange. Is such applicable to usernames as well?

Not really. Most GUI login screens display the username and ask for the password.

The  password is enough protection against a casual attempt at unauthorised login attempts.

Neither is much help against a determined intruder, you need to go beyond basic unix security
and at least encrypt the disk.

Why not bring this up in the coming meeting (did I miss the announcement?) and see what people do?

cheers

> I wanted an idea of rules and conventions. So I found the following. What's that about starting lowercase? And I read somewhere else that `.' was forbidden.
>
> {([a-z_][a-z0-9_]{0,30}) reads as "a lowercase or underscore, followed by zero to thirty alphanumeric characters", meaning the total length of the username can be 31 characters.}
>
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6949667/what-are-the-real-rules-for-linux-usernames-on-centos-6-and-rhel-6

-- 
Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal at eyal.emu.id.au)