Re: 16 bit UIDs

[Thomas Bushnell, BSG]

Wolfgang Jährling <wolfgang@pro-linux.de> writes:

> This overflow UID can be set with sysctl(8) and defaults to the value
> 65534 (not 65535, as one might expect).  It seems to be good enough for
> Linux, but I'm not sure if it is good enough for us, so how should we
> handle this situation?  Storing the UID `(ushort) ~0' in the i_uid field
> of the inode and using some trick (which shouldn't break anything, of
> course) to store the real UID elsewhere?

Ideally we use the trick.

One idea is just a straightforward file somewhere in the filesystem
that holds an index of inode numbers and UIDs.