The short bus



  • Right now I'm dealing with some GE client/server based (Windows only) software that can be configured to allow authentication against Windows accounts. </p<p>I just realized that the username field for their log in dialog box is hard coded for a maximum username length of 20 characters. Whereas Windows allows up to 256 chars for a username



  • Ok, I agree that having a 20 characters textbox to authenticate credentials that may have up to 256 characters is a WTF, but who in sane condition would ever have a 256 characters username*? Or a username greater than 20 characters, for that matter?

    *I mean, come on, even if you go as far as to use Ford Prefect's real name meaning ("boy who cannot sufficiently explain what a Hrung is, nor why it should choose to collapse on Betelgeuse Seven") you're still 146 characters short of it.



  •  Unless your user naming conventions call for a small biography followed by last name, this probably won't be a problem.



  • [quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]Ok, I agree that having a 20 characters textbox to authenticate credentials that may have up to 256 characters is a WTF, but who in sane condition would ever have a 256 characters username*? Or a username greater than 20 characters, for that matter?[/quote]

    Well how about the use case of "[Computer Name][UserName]"?

    I am trying to authenticate against a local windows account for a machine with the name xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx and a username of xxxxxxxxx so that the correct local windows account name is xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx\xxxxxxxxx which is 26 chars!



  • Or what if the company's username policy was something common like first initial + last name?  My last name has 10 characters and I'm not even Indian!



  • Point taken, guys.



  • The bus just got shorter

    I was just on the phone with tech support about the problems I am having with authentication. One of the things they wanted me to check was an audit trail report to see how far my logins got.

    Well the audit database is actually a MDB file,
    and the front end of it is actually an Access form.
    And to view the data I just need to run a report.
    And the only way to run a report is to do a "print preview".
    And the computer I am trying to run this on is a server with no printers attached to it.



  • @OzPeter said:

    I was just on the phone with tech support about the problems I am having with authentication. One of the things they wanted me to check was an audit trail report to see how far my logins got.

    Well the audit database is actually a MDB file,
    and the front end of it is actually an Access form.
    And to view the data I just need to run a report.
    And the only way to run a report is to do a "print preview".
    And the computer I am trying to run this on is a server with no printers attached to it.

    ... with the insinuation being that you can't run print preview without a printer? I mean, the process is stupid yes, but it doesn't sound like that big a deal...



  •  @Xyro said:

    Or what if the company's username policy was something common like first initial + last name?  My last name has 10 characters and I'm not even Indian!

    Cut it off at 20?  You must know how to spell your name without writing it all out, yes?



  • @Master Chief said:

    @Xyro said:
    Or what if the company's username policy was something common like first initial + last name?  My last name has 10 characters and I'm not even Indian!
    Cut it off at 20?  You must know how to spell your name without writing it all out, yes?
    ...point being, the username could already be longer than 20, and thus cause problems with the software mentioned by the OP's.  This was also in response to Renan's suggestion that 20 characters ought to be enough for anybody.



  • I thought everyone had long usernames...



  • @longlonglonglonglonglonglonglonglonglonglonglonglonglongusername said:

    I thought everyone had long usernames...

    Que?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    ... with the insinuation being that you can't run print preview without a printer? I mean, the process is stupid yes, but it doesn't sound like that big a deal...
    Since Print Preview is usually printer-dependent, it needs a printer to model it's preview on. Can be solved by installing any printer and set it's output to a file (or just install one of the free PDF printers).



  • @ender said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    ... with the insinuation being that you can't run print preview without a printer? I mean, the process is stupid yes, but it doesn't sound like that big a deal...
    Since Print Preview is usually printer-dependent, it needs a printer to model it's preview on. Can be solved by installing any printer and set it's output to a file (or just install one of the free PDF printers).

    Yes it can be solved that way.

    But one does not go around arbitrarily installing things onto the corporate servers of ones client without permission - as that sort of thing tends to annoy the client and can lead to all sorts of unpleasantness

    The solution I did use was to copy the MDB file to a system that had Access on it and dive into the file directly.



  • @Xyro said:

    @Master Chief said:

    @Xyro said:
    Or what if the company's username policy was something common like first initial + last name?  My last name has 10 characters and I'm not even Indian!
    Cut it off at 20?  You must know how to spell your name without writing it all out, yes?
    ...point being, the username could already be longer than 20, and thus cause problems with the software mentioned by the OP's.  This was also in response to Renan's suggestion that 20 characters ought to be enough for anybody.

     

    So go into the database and change it.



  • We used to have SGI Indy's at the university, and one of my fellow students had a password that was more than 64 characters. He could enter it, but after that the system would fail to log him in and return to the password prompt.



  • [quote user="Renan "C#" Sousa"]Ok, I agree that having a 20 characters
    textbox to authenticate credentials that may have up to 256 characters
    is a WTF, but who in sane condition would ever have a 256 characters
    username*?[/quote]

    Well, if I had realized *before* I demonstrated the superior performance of Samba as an AD DC just how much it was going to piss off a particular individual in the audience, and that I'd be working for his company a few months later at the mercy of said individual, I'd certainly not provided such a compelling show. But now that all that's happened, I fail to see how it is a sign of *my* insanity that I have such a username. Surely, it is a sign of the lack of sanity of the AD admin who made said account for me.



  • An .mdb file?  No way.  Switch the report file to design mode, find out what query it's running, go to the query tab and run the query as a stand alone.  look at the results paghe

     

    Sorry, missed the post where you copied the .mdb.\

    And there are NO printers installed on the server, at all?  I'd at LEAST have some kind of PDF or XPF printer on their somewhere just for occasions such as this.



  • I think ADUC limits a username using the GUI to 20 characters. It's probably their line of reasoning, with domain settings being set behind the scenes.


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