Messages in this thread | | | From | (david parsons) | Subject | Re: High UID support for Linux | Date | 23 Nov 1998 10:25:19 -0800 |
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In article <linux.kernel.19981121092339.A3719@caffeine.ix.net.nz>, Chris Wedgwood <cw@ix.net.nz> wrote: >On Thu, Nov 19, 1998 at 05:38:39PM -0500, Jon Leonard wrote: > >> Has anybody looked seriously at supporting 32 bit UIDs on Linux? We'd >> really like to make Linux a commodity at Umich, but with a user base of >> about 100,000, high UIDs are an absolute requirement. I've only just >> started looking at this, but scanning the include files, it would appear >> that some platforms already support high UIDs, but not i386. > >Many (most?) people still have libc5 -- which will break.
Not if you do the support properly.
Just build a new pile of system calls that return the 32 bit UIDs and modify the old calls to return an error return if the UID won't fit. This way libc 4 and libc 5 will continue to work without incident (libc 4, in any case, will be modified to work with the new calls) on most of the systems out there and people who do have a need for really big ids can put in shared libraries that will provide access to the new calls.
>We need everyone to move to glibc2 first -- then it shouldn't be so >much of a problem.
I think the phrase you're looking at here is `fat chance, buddo!'
____ david parsons \bi/ last of the libc-4 based linux distributers. \/
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