openssh unix dev - Mar 2006 - Username Length and Password Expiry

I am having a problem with usernames that are longer than 8 characters
on the following system types:

Solaris 8, Solaris 9
OpenSSH 4.2p1
OpenSSL 0.9.8a

When logging in with an SSH client like PuTTY, OpenSSH or SecureCRT,
the username is truncated when the password is asked to be changed.

Below is output from a PuTTY session when logging in to a system with
an expired password and a username that is 9 characters:

    =~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~= PuTTY log 2006.03.01 10:55:48  
=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~=~    login as: bclarkson

    bclarkson at sjc010ap02t's password:
    Last login: Wed Mar  1 10:55:05 2006 from hub5tv0951.fffc
    WARNING: Your password has expired.
    You must change your password now and login again!
    passwd: Changing password for bclarkso
    passwd: User unknown: bclarkso
    Permission denied

Notice the "n" at the end of the user name is dropped.

This works just fine using telnet as can be seen in the output below:

    SunOS 5.8

    login: bclarkson
    Password:
    Choose a new password.
    New Password:
    Re-enter new Password:
    telnet: password successfully changed for bclarkson
    Last login: Wed Mar  1 11:52:00 from 10.247.4.60

    $

Does anyone know of any fixes for this or if it is a bug?

Thank you,

Mark.

mark clarkson wrote:
> I am having a problem with usernames that are longer than 8 characters
> on the following system types:
> 
> Solaris 8, Solaris 9
> OpenSSH 4.2p1
> OpenSSL 0.9.8a
> 
> When logging in with an SSH client like PuTTY, OpenSSH or SecureCRT,
> the username is truncated when the password is asked to be changed.
[...]
>     WARNING: Your password has expired.
>     You must change your password now and login again!
>     passwd: Changing password for bclarkso
>     passwd: User unknown: bclarkso
>     Permission denied
> 
> Notice the "n" at the end of the user name is dropped.
All it does in that case is run "passwd" with no arguments.  If you
log
on (via telnet or ssh) and just run "passwd", does that work?

Solaris doesn't seem to support usernames longer than 8 chars:
$ uname -sr
SunOS 5.8
$ sudo useradd abcdefghi
UX: useradd: abcdefghi name too long.
> This works just fine using telnet as can be seen in the output below:
[...]
> Does anyone know of any fixes for this or if it is a bug?
You can try building with and enabling PAM (that's probably what telnet
is using).

-- 
Darren Tucker (dtucker at zip.com.au)
GPG key 8FF4FA69 / D9A3 86E9 7EEE AF4B B2D4  37C9 C982 80C7 8FF4 FA69
    Good judgement comes with experience. Unfortunately, the experience
usually comes from bad judgement.