Topic: User Accounts, ibays and adduser scripts

[Michael Daley]

Hello all:

We're running SME5 here, with about 1000 users.  We used the adduser script in the e-smith HOWTOs to add them all in one batch.  There's one problem, though.  Some user with usernames longer than 12 characters are added correctly, while others do not.  When this happens, adding, deleting and modifying users is impossible through the server-manager.  We've had to reinstall the entire server three times in as many days.

Has anyone else had this problem or know of a fix for it?

Cheers,
Mike

[Robert Boerner]

From the e-smith server manual...

User account names are limited to twelve characters to maintain consistency with various versions of Windows. Longer names can be created for e-mail through the Pseudonyms panel. For your information, pseudonyms of "firstname.lastname" and "firstname_lastname" are automatically created for each account.

see the link:

http://www.e-smith.org/docs/manual/5.0/admin-useraccounts.html#user-disabling

I can recommend a simple naming convention for users though. First six characters of the last name followed by the first initial. This gives you a seven character name, with an additional character to take care of possible duplicates, such as two Ed Smiths. smithe1 or smithe2 would work well.

Depending on how you created your flat file, maybe you could use the sed or awk utilities on Linux (if you are running it on the desktop somewhere) to change the names in your file to match that convention. I haven't touched either in a while, or I would try to help.

I know that doesn't help much, but I do have to ask one question...what kind of hardware are you running on? You mentioned you have 1000 users, and I am just curious as to the specs. Thanks in advance.

[guestHH]

Hi,

What you want can be done by this from the FAQ:

Regards,

RequestedDeletion

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Is there a way around 12-character i-bay name, account name, and group name limits?
Yes, as of e-smith version 4.1.1.

In order to provide compatibility with Windows9x machines we have deliberately set these limits to twelve. You can change the maximum length of these by setting maxIbayNameLength, maxAcctNameLength and maxGroupNameLength. When unset the default is 12. To allow names as long as 15 characters for an ibay for example, execute the following commands:

  /sbin/e-smith/db configuration set maxAcctNameLength 15
  /sbin/e-smith/signal-event console-save

[Michael Daley]

I have already modified the maximum account name size, but it still errors out.  We've got 78 out of 1076 that come up with problems.

As for the manual.  Been there, done that.

Regards,
Michael

[Robert Boerner]

Another question out of curiousity...why do you need user accounts with such long names? (I am not trying to be a wise a**, just curious).

Also, what kind of hardware are you running on? I only ask the question again because I am spec'ing a new machine and am scoping out RAID adpaters, tape drives, motherboards, etc.

[Michael Daley]

It's actually a test on some older hardware.  If it fails, we'll be justified in upgrading the server, with the expectation that it WILL fail.

Hardware wise, it's a Patriot Server, with 4 HDDs running in a RAID array, 256MB of RAM,, P233, no Tape Drive, we use backup to desktop.  I'd be happy to let you know how it goes, though I wouldn't recommend trying it.  

BTW, this is primarily being used for a basic web portal and e-mail server, it's not our primary site.

Cheers,
Mike

[frederic cloquell]

Hi! It's posible to use more than 15 chars per user name? Are any limit?
Thanks.

[Michael Daley]

Well, we gave up.  After 11 reinstalls, we've decided to scrap out idea about long usernames and stick with the convention that e-smith uses.

Thanks one and all for your help.

Cheers,
Mike