Long Usernames

[eng911]

I am moving to Cpanel for the first time. I bought a VPS just to play around a bit to get used to it, before I buy it and install it on some new colo servers.

I am useing the move account function to move accounts from CiHost. This functions works very well and I'm really happy about that.

I have one problem and it relates to the length of usernames. Some usernames are shortended to 8 characters on moving. This will mean a lot of work and will not offer a seamless transition as I move 50 domains.

I've read here in the forums some posts on this dating back to 2003 and 2004. I couldn't find anything recent. So I thought I would post to see if it is still difficult to change this preset in Cpanel. I did read post about changing a setting in the code and then running scripts to compare everytime cpanel updates.

Is this still the only way around this or did they put in a simple way to change it it more recent version updates?

[kosmo]

I have seen a few cpanel servers using long usernames and they all had problems with mysql usernames (which are limited to 16 chars of which the first part is $account_username, then underscore, then Mysql username. Example: joedoe_forum. Since the total length is limited to 16 chars, you will have serious problems if you enable long account usernames. My suggestion: Deal with converting to short usernames now in order to avoid much bigger problems later.

kosmo

[eng911]

So I take it that this length limit still persists?

I just think moving all these domains and reconfiguring all the users and contacting all the users to reconfigure all the email programs .... man what a headache .... but maybe better now than when I have 150 domains.

[Lyttek]

Indeed. But to get around that client-email problem, create the username as whatever you want, and then create email addresses using the old main account username.

An to prevent that in the future, I'd recommend not letting clients use their main account name as an email address anyway. Make it whatever you want, and then create the email addresses they want.

[eng911]

I found this other post and it said to do this .....

In /scripts/wwwacct on line 343 where it says

if ($ENV{'LONGUSERS'} ne "1") {
if (length($user) > 8) { deaderror "Sorry that username is too long. MAX is 8 letters"; }
}

change it to


if ($ENV{'LONGUSERS'} ne "1") {
if (length($user) > 20) { deaderror "Sorry that username is too long. MAX is 20 letters"; }
}

So if I did this right before I moved the account would it work? I know the next update would change it back but what would happen to existing long usernames?

[eng911]

I tried this and it still made the moved account 8 characters long.

[XX_RydeR]

I tried this and it still made the moved account 8 characters long.

Im in the same boat as you on this one.

Trying to move over domains around 300 or so, it's not as easy as i thought it would be.

If i find anything i'll update here, and you do the same.

Regards
RydeR.

[eng911]

Anyone from CPanel can offer any advice on this issue?

[chirpy]

If you want help from cPanel you'll need to ask them directly by logging a ticket through your cPanel license provider. The forums are not an official cPanel support channel.

[babakb]

I know this thread is about a year old but just wanted to see what's the best solution to get around the issue. I have to move over 350 domains (thousands of mailboxes) from a standard linux setup into a fresh new Cpanel server. To create several thousand shortened usernames and ask customers to change their e-mail client setup is not a good solution.

Has anyone out there been successfuly running Cpanel with the username length restriction increased and if so, how did you accomplish this? I've read threads about both modifying the code and setting the LONGUSERS envirionment variable. What's the best way to go about doing this?

Cpanel's username restriction defenitely discourages companies from moving from other platforms. If I can't get around this, unfortunately I'll have to dump Cpanel.

I also think it's a good idea for Cpanel to share their thoughts and suggestions on this issue. The forums is the first place people will come to research this..

[wrobbins8047]

Has anyone found a solution to this? I have 1150 web accounts that I need to move to 10 boxes, it may look like cpanel is out of the question.

[cpanelinfoseeker]

I have heard that this is the OS limitation and cPanel was just maintaining a safe environment by also imposing this same limit. I am unable to find the original post on this at this time.

Ron

[cPanelDavidG]

I have heard that this is the OS limitation and cPanel was just maintaining a safe environment by also imposing this same limit. I am unable to find the original post on this at this time.

Ron

It is an OS limitation (though some supported distros are allegedly okay with up to 16 chars now) but there's also many QA concerns about supporting longer usernames in environments that support such things.

The developers are aware of the demand for longer username support though .

[cpanelkenneth]

It was an OS limitation, but newer distros support longer names now (as noted in some comments above). However, there are other issues, such as the creation of MySQL databases, which names are limited to 16 characters. We are examining various was to change how MySQL databases are associated with a cPanel account, but don't expect that to happen before cPanel 12.