[Info-vax] SSH on VAX - performance impact of break in attempts

[Ken Fairfield]

On Aug 25, 1:16 pm, glen herrmannsfeldt <g... at ugcs.caltech.edu> wrote:
> Michael Moroney <moro... at world.std.spaamtrap.com> wrote:
> >>VAXman- wrote:
> >>(snip)
> >>> The 12 character username prohibits the 'administrator' account.
> Then I wrote:
> >>I thought that was changed a long time ago.
>
> (snip)
>
> >>I believe I was asked if I wanted all 14, but I was too used to
> >>the other one by then.
> > Doesn't VMS simply ignore all characters after the first 12?  I think
> > my audit server logs show many breakin attempts against the nonexistent
> > ADMINISTRATO account.
>
> It did for early versions, but around 1986 or so it changed.
>
> I was told at the time that it changed to allow longer names,
> but at least I know it didn't truncate them.
[...]

I think what you're remembering is that VMS initially had
9.3 file names, and similarly, the username was limited to
9 characters (or 8 ? "operator" is the longest "old" VMS-
provided account).  I don't know if it was required in those
early versions of VMS, but it was certainly ubiquitous
to name the user's sys$login directory the same as
their username, thus making the 9 (or 8) character username
limit sensible (if in fact it was that short in, e.g., VMS 1).

Along about VMS 4 (could have been VMS 3, but I think
that's too early), VMS extended files names to 39.39 and the
username limit was extended to 12 characters.  I remember
the change pretty vividly as it allow a bunch of us to change
our usernames (and login directories) to use our last names
rather than our initials+tla. :-)

    -Ken