From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jul 7 11:52:41 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id LAA00961 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 11:52:41 -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 LAA00956 for ; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 11:52:38 -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 OAA29761; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 14:48:51 -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 OAA00416; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 14:48:51 -0400 (EDT) From: Tony Holmes Received: (tholmes@localhost) by bitter.zeus.leitch.com (8.8.5/8.6.9) id OAA00371; Mon, 7 Jul 1997 14:48:51 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199707071848.OAA00371@bitter.zeus.leitch.com> Subject: Re: uid > 32000 In-Reply-To: from "David E. Cross" at "Jul 7, 97 01:49:04 pm" To: dec@phoenix.its.rpi.edu (David E. Cross) Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 14:48:51 -0400 (EDT) Cc: FreeBSD-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers list) 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 > It generall does not mean anything with modern unices. In the 'old' days > UID was a signed 16bit integer, which limited you to 32767 different > userids. Userids > 32767 were really negative numbers. The definition in > has the UID as an unsigned int (32 bits), giving 2.1 billion > different possibilities. Other than that, it is just a number for the > computer to use to track who owns what, there is nothing 'special' about > it. (the only special uid/gid is '0'). Thanks for the quick response. I should have clarified that I was looking for the user-land assumptions when the number was negative (in light of some user-land treatment as an signed 16 bit integer). Tony