On Saturday 2012-02-18 00:55, Mike Gabriel wrote:
I get Segmentation fault when I right-click on x2godesktopsharing icon in the system tray and choose "Activate Desktop Sharing". (Arch Linux.)
The segfault was due to non-existent "x2godesktopsharing" group in the system.
This involves two matters:
x Arch Linux does not allow for group names longer then 16 characters.
x x2godesktopsharing should check for existence of the group and quit nicely otherwise.
I need some feedback from the other devs how to handle this. We/I changed from group x2godesktopshare to x2godesktopsharing more or less recently, but was not aware of gid-lenght limitations in POSIX.
What do other devs think of reverting the group name change?
I do not see any group name length limit either, however,
(a) there is a limit as to what a user can/want to take. While
tabcompletion probably gets you out most of the time, nobody really
wants e.g. /home/Karl\ Theodor\ Maria\ Nikolaus\ Johann\ Jacob
Philipp\ Franz\ Joseph\ Sylvester\ Freiherr\ von\ und\ zu\ Guttenberg
(21st century, though past-time, German politician serving for this
example).
(b) not defined by POSIX, but there is an actual sanity limit. A username length about PATH_MAX chars long becomes problematic to be used in a path, e.g. when attempting to use for /home :)
The 16 character limit in Arch is just like the 80 character "limit" in coding. But actually, it is not a limit, but a wellness target: it may be exceeded if there is a justification. In contrast, historic UNIX usernames of 8 chars - /that/ was a limit.
Was there a reason to put users through a name change the first time? (Note that such changes may not necessarily be automated, e.g. when users relocate the group into LDAP)