[CentOS] Best practices for the maximal length of user names

Sun Nov 14 15:54:10 UTC 2010
Benjamin Franz <jfranz at freerun.com>

On 11/13/2010 05:25 AM, Mathieu Baudier wrote:
> But people are sometimes frustrated with having their last name
> truncated and I wonder if limiting the user name to 8 characters is
> not a kind of superstition coming from some old times...


CentOS5 supports 31 characters for user names (I tested it). 8 character 
limits for user names was a holdover from some truly ancient Unix 
systems and has been pretty much irrelevant to Linux for more than ten 
years.

There is no reason I can think of to limit user names in Linux to 8 
characters now unless you need to inter-operate account logins with an 
old Unix box that still has that limit.

-- 
Benjamin Franz