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

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

Ken Fairfield <ken.fairfield at gmail.com> wrote:
(snip on username length limits)
 
> 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).

In the VMS 1.x days I had gah for my username, so that wasn't
a problem.  In about the V3.0 days (and a different place) they
wanted whole last names for the username.  They took the first
12 letters for my username and the first nine for the directory
name.  When my account was first setup, though, it was done
wrong such that I couldn't access my own home directory, I presume
because the names didn't match.  I could still type in the 14
letters and it would accept just the first 12.
 
> 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. :-)

Some time later, I was told (apparently incorrectly) that the
length had increased.  Maybe it was just the directory names,
and our administrator was confused.  In any case, about
that time it stopped allowing me to type in 14 letters for
a 12 letter username.  I left that place in the V5.x days, and
never tried a long name again.

-- glen