# Foresee any issues with username?



## robotchaos (Jul 3, 2019)

So my initials are rc and that's what I have chosen to be my username, as I have no middle name. So far, all seems okay. But can anyone foresee any issues with the username of `rc`? I know the service software is rc and such, so I'm not sure if there will be any conflicts. Any insight would be appreciated.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 3, 2019)

Where are you using this? The operating system doesn't go looking for random files in userspace, regardless of what letters they have in them.


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## malavon (Jul 3, 2019)

With this particular username I don't immediately foresee any troubles. The only thing I can imagine is that one day there is a username 'rc' used by the system.
You can check /etc/master.passwd to see some of the usernames that are currently already in use. These don't get expanded very often, but it's of course always possible.
Another file with usernames that you best not use can be found in the ports tree, e.g. /usr/ports/UIDs.
In that file you'll notice there is no user 'rc' either. There are other short usernames though (like 'hg' and some others).
I'm not sure how bad the damage will be should 'rc' become an official username, but I'm guessing that should it happen you can always change your username and optionally move the home dir.

In the end there's always the root account to fix things, unless this is a remote system which is only accessible by ssh and you need a user that's in the 'wheel' group.


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## robotchaos (Jul 3, 2019)

It's on my laptop, if that's what you mean.

That was my main concern, future usernames. Thanks for the information. I may come up with a new username scheme, just in case.


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## ralphbsz (Jul 4, 2019)

I used to work for one of the largest computer companies in the world. You know, one with an easily recognizable name, like HP, IBM or Sun; for privacy, let's call them XXX. A colleague of mine had the e-mail address t@xxx.com. Why? This company was one of the first few major computer companies to connect to the early Arpanet (the thing that morphed into the Internet later), and he was the sys admin of the first computer that company connected to the Arpanet, and his user ID on that server was "t".  It worked fine. He was rather proud of his e-mail address, which worked for many years (until someone without a sense of humor fixed it).

Now, is this kind of thing scalable? No. In a company with >400K people, not everyone can have a single-character user name. So standards and procedures were put into place. But on a small machine, with 5 or 10 users, there would be no problem using 1- or 2-character user names, as long as the 5 or 10 people don't get easily confused.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jul 4, 2019)

There is one username you probably shouldn't use though:  https://www.xkcd.com/327/


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## _martin (Jul 4, 2019)

Username is OK. It passed the char check too. When it comes to short logins - come here (computerphile@youtube) and have a look.

Sidenote: At UNI back then we used to troll some users with creation of username "666" and its uid 1337 , etc. Funny times, caused some headaches.


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