Cpanel 8 Char Username Restriction

[Squidix Web Hosting]

I'd like to get some community feedback on this as the devs don't seem interested in doing it.

 

cPanel usernames are restricted to 8 chars by Blesta. This is crazy. Every single hosting company in the world with more than a handful of customers has at least one cPanel user that was migrated in or something similar with a username of more than 8 chars. cPanel doesn't even enforce this restriction, so resellers constantly go well over 8 chars for their cpanel accts.

 

This really isn't Blesta's problem to be enforcing. It's cPanel's. If they want to enforce it let them do so, without making it impossible to bring in old data. Pretty much everyone who uses Blesta is going to have to increase this at some point in time with a code change.

[Tyson]

We already have a task (CORE-1516) on record to update the cPanel module to allow for up to 16 character usernames.

 

cPanel does enforce these character limits, and while I agree their username character limit scheme is absurd, it is still a requirement of their system. This is referenced in their API documentation and in a blog post regarding the version (11.44) that they introduced an increase in username length.

 

While Blesta can normally get away with avoiding input requirements that other systems enforce, doing so would pose a large usability problem and have unnecessary performance costs in Blesta, likely to cause both clients and admins headache. Any invalid field data will not be known until the service is provisioned, at which time it will fail. If the cron is provisioning the service, you may not know why the service failed, as the error returned from the module may not be logged, or may be too obscure to determine the cause (e.g. "Error #50191") without requiring manual intervention. These failed API requests and the need for manual intervention after the service should have been provisioned can be avoided by requiring valid information to be entered from the beginning.

 

Some might want to increase the cPanel character limit themselves until an official release is made to the module, in which case this thread may be useful in describing how to do so.

[Paul]

EDIT: Hey, Tyson beat me to it.

 

It looks like Linux allows usernames up to 32 characters, cPanel allows usernames up to 16 characters if database prefixing is disabled.

 

Considering that the cPanel module generates usernames, an increase in the limit should not create any issues for clients. It could create issues for staff, but this would likely just result in an error from the module should cPanel reject the request.

 

https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/SDK/WHM+API+1+Functions+-+createacct

 

 

Notes:

• Usernamesmustcontain eight characters or less.
• As of cPanel & WHM version 11.40, usernames may contain 16 characters or less if database prefixes are disabled.
• Usernames cannot begin with a number, or the stringtest.

 

Would you say then, it would be reasonable to set the max length of a username to 16 characters?

[Paul]

I believe this will do it for anyone wanting to make this change now. To change the character limit manually, edit /components/modules/cpanel/cpanel.php and look for:

'rule' => array("betweenLength", 1, 8),

Change to:

'rule' => array("betweenLength", 1, 16),

[Paul]

I have pushed CORE-1516 to the top of the backlog, this should take a couple minutes.

[Squidix Web Hosting]

Okay, so it will be going up to 16 chars, great, thanks.

[Tyson]

cPanel account usernames will allow for lengths up to 16 characters in v3.6.0 (CORE-1516).

[Squidix Web Hosting]

Thanks guys!