[lug] qmail issues...

[Matt Clauson]

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On Wednesday 15 January 2003 09:38, Jeff Schroeder wrote:
> > I have a user (local delivery) that I just created, with a capital
> > letter in the user name.
>
> What's the general consensus on using capital letters in usernames
> and/or e-mail addresses?
>
> IIRC, qmail (and perhaps Sendmail) automatically lowercase the
> username and domain name of an address before even attempting to
> deliver it.  In this way there are several ways to write an address:
>
> jeff at neobox.net
> Jeff at neoBox.net
> JeFF at neoBoX.NEt

qmail does lowercase the 'local' part of the email address.  However, 
Unix usernames are case sensitive, as a general rule, and qmail treats 
capitalized usernames as non-deliverable, as a general rule.  (See my 
followup post for more info.)

> In that sense, I always use strictly lowercase for all my e-mail, but
> of course there are lots of people who capitalize initials and so
> forth to (perhaps) clarify their name.
>
> On the subject of usernames, I've always used all-lowercase with a
> maximum of eight characters, although I know *nix will support
> capitalization and longer names.  Is it common to do so?

The 8-character limit has historical and current precedent -- a lot of 
classic-unix utilities and systems (including Solaris 8, and possibly 9 
- -- I haven't checked yet) won't recgonize characters past the 8 
character boundary in the username.  Same for passwords.  Only systems 
with newer utilities (such as Linux or *BSD with support for MD5/SHA1 
passwords) support longer usernames or passwords.

As a general rule, I tell users to stick with 8 characters or less for 
their Unix usernames.  Most of the old-hands already know this, and 
some new ones, too.  It depends on what OS mixture, etc. I'm running as 
to how stringently I enforce it.

- --mec
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