[ On Monday, April 26, 1999 at 21:14:11 (+1000), Giles Lean wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: negative user-ids and interoperability. 
>
> 
> Again, from UNIX 98 (a pretty dodgy standard to want to adhere to, but
> what I've easiest access to):
> 
>  user ID
> 
>     A non-negative integer that is used to identify a system
>     user. When the identity of a user is associated with a process, a
>     user ID value is referred to as a real user ID, an effective user
>     ID or a saved set-user-ID.

The Single UNIX Specification, Version 2 (available online at
<URL:http://www.rdg.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/7908799/>) which is a damn
sight better than UNIX 98 as far as industry standards go, simply says
that a "uid_t" is an integer of the "appropriate width".  It doesn't
even say if it's signed, or not, though most modern implementations I'm
aware of use unsigned 32-bit integers for ID types these days (and for
about the last decade! ;-).

I don't know what POSIX 1003.1 (which is more "standard" in the sense
that it's been adopted by ISO) says, if anything.

> Now, that's a fine mess, given that "everyone" has always used
> negative user ids for root over NFS, nobody etc etc.

Including NetBSD, by default (from approximately line 1854 of
usr.sbin/mountd.c):

        /*
         * Set up the unpriviledged user.
         */
        cr->cr_ref = 1;
        cr->cr_uid = -2;
        cr->cr_gid = -2;
        cr->cr_ngroups = 0;

Unfortunately, as I've been saying for quite some time now, you can't
put "-2", or its unsigned equivalent, in /etc/master.passwd to match
this usage in mountd -- libc/gen/pw_scan.c enforces the maximum legal
value of UID_MAX (and GID_MAX), which is only 2147483647U.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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