[TUHS] Of login names

Tony Finch dot at dotat.at
Mon Jul 18 22:24:05 AEST 2016


Paul Osborne <paosborne at gmail.com> wrote:

> Heh. At a previous site around 20 years ago we used initial letters of
> names generated automatically with a number following so at one point had:

We have a similar scheme which has been running (with minor changes) for
about 40 years, with a throughput of about 250,000 people in the last 20
years (the era of bulk user registration). A while back I wrote a note
about some of the reasons it works well, but I didn't mention that if
someone ends up with an unfortunate username, we can (modulo language
barriers) blame the parents...

http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/~fanf2/hermes/doc/misc/crsids.pdf

We also allocate unique permanent Unix UIDs for everyone. This numbering
started in 1982, and with some foresight my (mostly retired) colleagues
decided to start numbering at 100, to allow space for system IDs.
Unfortunately nowadays a few of my older colleagues have UIDs that clash
with preallocated system UIDs on some recent Linux distributions.

Tony.
-- 
f.anthony.n.finch  <dot at dotat.at>  http://dotat.at/  -  I xn--zr8h punycode
Viking, North Utsire: Variable 2 or 3, becoming southerly or southwesterly 4
or 5. Slight, occasionally moderate in north. Rain at times. Moderate or good.



More information about the TUHS mailing list