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Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 07:26:20 -0500
From: "Jacques A. Vidrine" <nectar@FreeBSD.org>
To: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@phk.freebsd.dk>
Message-ID: <20030409122620.GC19391@madman.celabo.org>
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cc: arch@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: endianess of /etc/pwd.db
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On Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 10:17:41AM +0200, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> 
> Kris ran into this problem:  copying a /etc/pwd.db from one endianess
> to another gave him really weird uid/gid numbers.
> 
> The DB code itself is endianess-agnostic, so the first warning one
> gets is the weird UID/GID.
> 
> Should we make the endianess of this file explicit to prevent this
> pit-fall for our users ?  The cost would be less than epsilon.

I am working in this area recently, and the exact same thought
occurred to me.  I think we should do it.  I would add a file format
version flag, the absence of which indicates the current MD format,
and adjust getpwent/pwd_mkdb accordingly.  Are there any other tools
that would need to be touched?

Cheers,
-- 
Jacques A. Vidrine <nectar@celabo.org>          http://www.celabo.org/
NTT/Verio SME          .     FreeBSD UNIX     .       Heimdal Kerberos
jvidrine@verio.net     .  nectar@FreeBSD.org  .          nectar@kth.se