Bug 184163 - username haldaemon exceeds 8 chars in length
Summary: username haldaemon exceeds 8 chars in length
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: hal
Version: rawhide
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: David Zeuthen
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2006-03-06 22:46 UTC by Dax Kelson
Modified: 2013-03-06 03:45 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2006-09-28 23:22:39 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Dax Kelson 2006-03-06 22:46:01 UTC
Description of problem:

The username "haldaemon" is 9 characters in length and violates a long
standing convention of 8 character maximum username lengths.

This has a real world impact in the output of the "ls" and "ps" commands.
Besides the visual glitches and mis-alignments from those commands, they are
often used as input to shell scripts which might mis-execute when their input
changes.

Additionally, old tar and cpio may not deal well with username > 8 chars.

Comment 1 John (J5) Palmieri 2006-03-06 23:18:48 UTC
It is too late to fix this in hal.  Presumably the tools should be fixed to deal
with long user names.

Comment 2 Dax Kelson 2006-03-07 00:14:12 UTC
It would be great if it was fixed for FC5, but not expected given the late date.

You can't fix "ps" or "ls".

How about fixing this when rawhide opens again for FC6?

Comment 3 David Zeuthen 2006-09-28 23:22:39 UTC
Nope, it would break upgrades etc., not going to happen. Plus, I know Debian has
the same policy and I think they now regret they are using the user name 'hal'
as it's a somewhat common name at least here in the US. Sorry.


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