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SubjectRe: High UID support for Linux
On 27 Nov 1998, Andreas Schwab wrote:

> They will just use getenv("HOME"). No need for uid.

$HOME isn't always set[1], and some existing programs do
getpwuid(getuid())->pw_dir[2]. Sure, you can argue that they need fixing,
but having to "fix" the program involves recompiling the program, and if
you can recompile the program, it will be recompiled with the extended
getpwuid()/getuid()/etc. calls and won't be a problem any more. Doesn't
help if you happen to need a binary for which you've lost the source[3] or
can't get source.

It's been a long time since I've done much source-level hacking on random
userspace programs, and I'm therefore unlikely to have much of a feel
anymore for what programs really do to find your home directory.

I'm not advocating the kludge here. Frankly, I don't know what the Right
Answer(tm) is to extending uid_t to 32 bits *and* keeping backwards
compatibility.


[1]Rare, but can happen.
[2]E.g., if $HOME isn't set, or if the program is setuid and doesn't trust
$HOME.
[3]Like the online password changer at the last ISP I worked for. Worked
fine (mostly), but would have needed to be rewritten from scratch as
soon as we used uid 65536. Not impossible, but not trivial, given the
Byzantine system we had. =)

--
Jeffrey Sean Connell | Networking/Telecommunications Engineer, GXC
ankh@canuck.gen.nz | PGP key at http://www.canuck.gen.nz/~ankh/pgpkey.html
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