[7403] in Release_7.7_team
Re: Remove "Nickname" field in GECOS?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Garry P Zacheiss)
Sat Mar 12 01:12:23 2011
From: Garry P Zacheiss <zacheiss@MIT.EDU>
To: Jonathan D Reed <jdreed@mit.edu>
CC: Garry P Zacheiss <zacheiss@mit.edu>,
"release-team@mit.edu"
<release-team@mit.edu>
Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2011 01:12:16 -0500
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Sure, I have a patch to do this ready to go now. Do I need to do any coordination with you, or can I just deploy it?
Garry
On Mar 11, 2011, at 3:59 PM, Jonathan Reed wrote:
> Hi Garry,
>
> We'd like to kill off Athena finger (because its non-standard format
> screws up some OS-native utilities, like ACPI). One of the few reasons we
> still have Athena finger is that our GECOS field is non-standard,
> containing the extra "Nickname" field. Can we punt this from the Hesiod
> DCM? We discussed it at release-team today, and we believe that it will
> have a minimal risk, because:
> - most people using parsing GECOS by hand are only interested in the full
> name, and the position of that won't change
> - the primary purpose of Athena finger (to be Hesiod aware) is moot in the
> modern world
> - If you want someone's correct contact info, you want MITDIR, not finger.
> If you're amenable, we could do this now, or wait until this summer and
> advertise the change as part of the Natty upgrade.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Jon
