Bugzilla Bug 3485

It would be great if useradd and groupadd would support names longer than 16
chars. POSIX does not specify a particular limit (instead it's a sysconf()
parameter), so there are no compatibility issues in using long names. groupadd
and useradd themselves behave the same to programs that call them with short
names, so there are no issues as well.
On the other hand, my service framework uses names like
<servicename>-<username>, so it's really useful.
And to make the decision even easier: the Debian tools work fine with long
names.

Ok, please check for me what package contains the tools on debian, and even 
better, a url to the .deb and patches.

> Ok, please check for me what package contains the tools on debian,
passwd

> and even better, a url to the .deb 
http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/s/shadow/passwd_20000902-12_i386.deb

> and patches.
http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/s/shadow/shadow_20000902-12.diff.gz
http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/s/shadow/shadow_20000902.orig.tar.gz

Do you need anything else?

Created an attachment (id=2785) [edit]
Patch for long group names

I've attached the patch to remove the arbitrary group name limit from
group{add,mod,del}.
Since there is no standardized limit on the length of group names, it should be
up to the administrator to choose the maximum length. At most groupadd should
print a warning, but it must not abort.

Do you actually use group names longer than 16 chars ?

As for the username limit, this is glibc/utmp dependant.
It is limited as follow:

------------------------cut---------------------------
    /*
     * User names are limited by whatever utmp can
     * handle (usually max 8 characters).
     */
    if (strlen(name) > sizeof(ut.ut_user))
        return 0;
------------------------cut---------------------------

The sizeof ut.ut_user is equal to __UT_NAMESIZE, which in
my /usr/include/bits/utmp[x].h, it is as follows:

------------------------cut---------------------------
#define __UT_LINESIZE   32
#define __UT_NAMESIZE   32
#define __UT_HOSTSIZE   256
------------------------cut---------------------------

Meaning, usernames of 32 chars is supported.

Yes, I do use long group names for my service framework. The {user,group}names
are called <service_name>-<user/group_name>. So, to give an example, if the
service is called qmail-smtp-ssl and the group is qmail, the resulting name is
qmail-smtp-ssl-qmail. That's 20 chars.
As for the user names, that's a limitation of glibc. If I need longer user
names, I can just change the defines and recompile glibc and shadow (I might
actually have to recompile some more packages and remove the current utmp
file).

ok, ive added long groupname support to shadow-4.0.6 (no version bump)