Re: [REQADM-Users-L] Re: supporting usernames greater than 8 letters

[Steve W. <st...@ic...>]

On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Steve Willoughby wrote:

> Date: Tue, 9 Nov 2004 08:49:36 -0800 (PST)
> From: Steve Willoughby <st...@al...>
> To: mw...@tt...
> Cc: req...@li...
> Subject: [REQADM-Users-L] Re: supporting usernames greater than 8 letters
>
> Matthew White wrote:
> > So, it seems that reqadm has a hard limit of 8 characters for the
> > Unix username field.  Is there a way around this?  I tried editing
> > and compiling a new schema file, but when I dbinit'd and ran reqadmd,
> > it freaked out:
>
> When you change the schema file you need to do more than that.  For the
> Perl and Tcl APIs to the database, that would be sufficient.  But for
> the C/C++ API, the database schema compiler (dbcomp) actually generates
> a .h file containing structure/object definitions for each table in the
> database.  These need to be compiled into REQADM so its data structures
> will match what is in the database, or things will get very unhappy.  I
> am actually out on vacation this week, but I'll see if I can look over the
> code for any other potential issues with 8-character logins other than
> the database field.  For now, I'd recommend not changing that.

Besides that, the 8-character limit is too prevalent throughout REQADM,
including its client-server protocol.  Fortunately, REQADM doesn't use
usernames for very much, using the numeric IDs for users as the primary
means of keeping them organized, but moving to >8 character logins is not
a trivial change.  I'll put it on the list of things to do in the near
term, while I'm working on the database changes.  The client-server protocol
will be completely different in 2.0, so I believe by the time we're
finished with the 2.0 coding, the 8-character limit will be gone at the
same time.

-- 
Steve Willoughby          | "The purpose of IT is to seamlessly and trans-
Intel DPG Eng. Computing  | parently provide the other nine-tenths of the
Application Development   | iceberg for people who need to work with chunks
<st...@ic...>  | of floating ice."           --Strata R. Chalup