On Wed, 23 Dec 1998, Elliot Finley wrote:
> Exim will happily deliver a message locally to any username that is
> longer than 8 characters as long as the first 8 characters match one
> of the local usernames. For example, I have a customer with a
> username of 'acarlisl' and I have to frequently go in and manually
> delete the mailbox 'acarlisle' that exim creates. Also, I have a
> customer with a username of 'anderson' and mail sometimes gets
> delivered to 'andersons'.
>
> Is this a bug or a feature? :-)
I think it is a bug in your operating system. Exim just calls getpwnam()
to discover if a local part is a valid login. It does not presume to
know what the maximum length of login names is. On Solaris 2.5.1
getpwnam() fails for a string longer than 8 characters, even if the
first 8 characters match an existing login. (I have just done the test.)
Earlier versions of the documentation for Solaris specify a limit of 8
characters, but the man page for Solaris 2.5.1 does not contain any such
limit.
--
Philip Hazel University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@??? Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.
--
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