From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jul 7 11:51:20 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA00834 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 11:51:20 -0700 (PDT) Received: from gateman.zeus.leitch.com (gateman.zeus.leitch.com [204.187.61.193]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA00824 for ; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 11:51:13 -0700 (PDT) Received: from zeus.leitch.com (0@tap.zeus.leitch.com [204.187.60.10]) by gateman.zeus.leitch.com (8.8.5/8.7.3/1.0) with ESMTP id OAA29748 for ; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 14:47:32 -0400 (EDT) Received: from bitter.zeus.leitch.com (0@bitter.zeus.leitch.com [204.187.61.66]) by zeus.leitch.com (8.7.5/8.7.3/1.0) with ESMTP id OAA00405 for ; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 14:47:32 -0400 (EDT) From: Tony Holmes Received: (tholmes@localhost) by bitter.zeus.leitch.com (8.8.5/8.6.9) id OAA00363 for FreeBSD-hackers@freebsd.org; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 14:47:31 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199707071847.OAA00363@bitter.zeus.leitch.com> Subject: Re: uid > 32000 To: FreeBSD-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers list) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 14:47:31 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL31 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > No. There is no bit-decoding of uid_t values, other than reserved > values. The user "Nobody" is generally UID -2, represented as 65534. > > The user "Nobody" will show as an error if the program is testing > with: > > uid_t result; > > ... > > if( result < 0) > > vs. testing with: > > if( result == -1) > > So it is minorly significant, mostly for buggy programs, or programs > which specifically disallow "Nobody" and other "reserved range" user > ID's. Thanks. This was exactly the kind of info I was looking for. I had also poured through the kernel sources and saw the declaration of uid_t, but was also aware of user land use of it as a signed 16 bit integer. It was just unclear on how this assumption was significant. Tony