passwd bugs (was Re: Root passwd bug on 386i)

[Alan Biocca]

In article <8903311251.AA04283 at cobra.mitre.org> gfr at cobra.mitre.org (Glenn Roberts) writes:
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 7, Issue 232, message 10 of 21

>If you set your root password to anything with more than 8 characters on a
>Sun386i you won't be able to log in from the console as root!  (still can
>'su' though).  I haven't taken the time to find out why this happens or
>whether this same problem could exist on other Sun systems.

I have experienced this with user accounts as well, and this on Sun-3/68020
based systems running 3.x...  The system is inconsistent when dealing with
long account names in some cases trimming to 8 characters and others using
the whole length of account name (depending on the program(s) involved).
Our solution was to stay below 8 characters.

comments by Alan K Biocca