OPSYS field and the Identifier

Peter Eriksson <pen@lysator.liu.se> Tue, 28 July 1992 17:23 UTC

Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 19:23:10 -0000
From: Peter Eriksson <pen@lysator.liu.se>
To: andersa@mizar.docs.uu.se, ident@NRI.Reston.VA.US
Subject: OPSYS field and the Identifier
Message-Id: <CMM.0.90.0.712344190.pen@robin.lysator.liu.se>

Anders writes:

> I think you are overloading the opsys field with connotations that aren't
> there.  It's true that the opsys identifier should be OTHER if the user
> name is provided in a non-standard form (say, an encrypted version of the
> standard user name).  However, what do you mean by 'real username' in
> your suggested paragraph?  That the string corresponds to a human user?
> That the string is readable to a human eye?  That the string is not the
> result of an encryption process?

When I talk about a 'real username' in my example, then what I mean is
the normal way of identifing the connection owner (which for a Unix system
would be the username as specified in /etc/passwd).

> I think the first two alternatives are wrong, and the third adds nothing
> to what's already in the draft.  Do you mean something else?

> Would you exclude the possibility of putting the registered name of a
> particular kind of terminal server in the opsys field, and the serial
> port number (say, "P1" to "P16") in the user-id field?  I.e. is "P16"
> enough of a 'real username' for you, or do you have more specific
> requirements?

No, that would be ok if that is the normal way of identifying that
particular kind of connection "owner". 

To put it the other way around; If we _don't_ say _anything_ in the
RFC about what the identifier should be, then the current practice, of
which IRC and LPMUD is two examples (but the Sendmail patches is not -
since it in the Sendmail case is used mostly for auditing purposes, as
opposed to informational purposes), would be severely hampered (since one
then cannot make any assumptions at all of what information _really_ is
returned).

No point then of displaying it at all really. (Who's interrested in seeing
that IRC Nickname user "FOO" happens to have the RFC931 identifier
"ERtgds435dfg" this time?) I think it would be a pity to not being able
to distinguish between (whatever, and if there is such a thing) the normal
connection identifier (a username in the Unix case) and some constructed
other kind of identifier (like an encrypted token).

/Peter

Peter Eriksson                                              pen@lysator.liu.se
Lysator Academic Computer Society                 ...!uunet!lysator.liu.se!pen
University of Linkoping, Sweden                           I'm bored. Flame me.

OPSYS field and the Identifier Peter Eriksson
Re: OPSYS field and the Identifier Anders Andersson