Security Identifier (SID) to User Identifier (uid) ResolutionSystem

[Steve Langasek]

On Thu, 30 Dec 1999, Leslie M. Barstow III wrote:

> BTW - here's a dumb question (kind of related via winbind)
>       is there an 8-character limitation to the getpwnam()
>       implementation?  IIRC, at least the passwd file has
>       this limit (in Linux).

I'll take questions not tied to holy wars for 200, Alex... :)

Not a difficult question to answer, though--you say *the* getpwnam()
implementation, when in fact each Unix has its own implementation.  Some
Unices have 8-char limits, and in fact attempting to use longer names can
cause bugs/crashes/exploits.

Linux does not have such a limit, although software running under Linux can
make poor assumptions about the length of usernames they're given.  When
looking at files with the 'ls -l' command, the name *displayed* will be
limited to 8 characters, but this is simply because that's all the name that
will fit into the 8-character field in the output.

-Steve Langasek
postmodern programmer