User Name Lenght in AIX?

[ns...@vnet.net]

Hi All,

I'm using AIX 4.2 (with maintenance). Recently I was using smitty to add a
new user 'postmaster', but smitty complains that the name exceeds the maximum
name length of 8 characters.

Is there a way to overcome this limit?

TIA,
Neal...

[Dan Harkless]

No, but you can use an alias in /etc/aliases to point the address
"postmaster" to an account with a shorter name, such as root (or "postmstr"
if you really wanna make a separate account).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan Harkless | NOTE: Due to SPAM I have implemented a caller-ID-
d...@wave.eng.uci.edu | like policy for this account. Put "re-send" in
Unitech Research, Inc. | your Subject to bypass or finger me for more info.

[Charles Lavin]

But this doesn't actually allow you to log in as "postmaster," does it?

I've only used /etc/aliases to cross-reference email names. I've never tried
to use it to circumvent the 8-character login name limit.

CL

"Dan Harkless" <d...@wave.eng.uci.edu> wrote in message
news:85grkq$g5b$1...@news.service.uci.edu...

[Dan Harkless]

Charles Lavin <nob...@bellsouth.net> writes:
>> >I'm using AIX 4.2 (with maintenance). Recently I was using smitty to
>> >add a new user 'postmaster', but smitty complains that the name
>> >exceeds the maximum name length of 8 characters.
>> >
>> >Is there a way to overcome this limit?
>>
>> No, but you can use an alias in /etc/aliases to point the address
>> "postmaster" to an account with a shorter name, such as root (or
>> "postmstr" if you really wanna make a separate account).
>

>But this doesn't actually allow you to log in as "postmaster," does it?

No. As I said, there is no way to overcome the limit on login account name
length. I've never heard of a UNIX that allowed you to use accounts more
than 8 characters long, unless it was using some kind of special extensions,
like for Orange Book security (AIX's "Trusted Computing Base"???).

>I've only used /etc/aliases to cross-reference email names. I've never tried
>to use it to circumvent the 8-character login name limit.

Many companies like use predictable email addresses, like
<first_initial><last_name>. If your last name is too long for this, like
mine, the /etc/aliases can be used to, for instance, alias dharkless to
dharkles. Yes, this will only allow you to receive mail as that account
name. You'll still need to use the short one for logging in or checking
messages via POP3 (unless you have software that truncates the given account
name at 8 characters).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------