Date: Mon, 7 Jul 1997 13:49:04 -0400 (EDT) From: "David E. Cross" <dec@phoenix.its.rpi.edu> To: Tony Holmes <tholmes@zeus.leitch.com> Cc: FreeBSD hackers list <FreeBSD-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: uid > 32000 Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.95q.970707134019.11631A-100000@phoenix.its.rpi.edu> In-Reply-To: <199707071557.LAA01700@bitter.zeus.leitch.com>
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On Mon, 7 Jul 1997, Tony Holmes wrote: > Hello, > > I've been pouring through any document I can get my hands onto and > can't find if there is any significance to a user id that is greater > than 32000. > > There are a couple of user id's in our system defined in the 64000 > range (notably the nobody user) and I was wondering if this infers > additional/reduced priviledges. > > If anyone could answer this question or point out documentation for > this, I would greatly appreciate it. > 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 <pwd.h> 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'). -- David Cross
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