From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Feb 19 16:36:55 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from wall.polstra.com (rtrwan160.accessone.com [206.213.115.74]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4485E11998 for ; Fri, 19 Feb 1999 16:36:52 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jdp@polstra.com) Received: from vashon.polstra.com (vashon.polstra.com [206.213.73.13]) by wall.polstra.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id QAA26140; Fri, 19 Feb 1999 16:36:51 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jdp@polstra.com) Received: (from jdp@localhost) by vashon.polstra.com (8.9.2/8.9.1) id QAA03555; Fri, 19 Feb 1999 16:36:51 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jdp@polstra.com) Message-ID: X-Mailer: XFMail 1.3 [p0] on FreeBSD X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <199902200027.RAA14243@usr02.primenet.com> Date: Fri, 19 Feb 1999 16:36:50 -0800 (PST) Organization: Polstra & Co., Inc. From: John Polstra To: Terry Lambert Subject: Re: UIDs greater than 65535? Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Terry Lambert wrote: >> Can anybody think of a reason why UIDs > 65535 wouldn't work under >> FreeBSD? They seem to work, and I can't find any reason why they >> shouldn't. Even the NFS protocol (though not necessarily all NFS >> servers) seems to be able to accomodate 4-byte UIDs. > > 65536 in an unsigned short is -1 is "nobody". Actually, nobody is 65534 on FreeBSD systems. But anyway, I've only found a couple of places where UIDs are stored in unsigned shorts: * In the API to the System V message functions, in . * In Linux programs run under emulation. There are also some limits in archive files, because UIDs are encoded as (*gag*) 5-digit decimal numbers. These problems are all avoidable in the application I have in mind. John --- John Polstra jdp@polstra.com John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." -- H. L. Mencken To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message