aggarwal@nisc.jvnc.net (Vikas Aggarwal) (10/08/90)
I have SunOS4.03c running on a couple of SPARC systems. Recently my accounting program has been sending me error messages complaining about a UID of 65534 (if memory serves me right). After pottering about for a bit, it turned out that the 'in.tftpd' daemon sets its uid and group-id to '-2' which is defined in the password file as user 'nobody', so that only publicly accesible files can be accessed via tftp. However, in the /usr/include/sys/acct.h file, the uid_t is defined as u_short, as a result of which, whenever the tftpd daemon sets its uid to a negative value, it messes the accounting program's idea of the uid (-2 corresponding to +65534 unsigned). Was this 'bug' (dare I call it one), known about and has it been fixed in release 4.1 ? Can this present any other unforseen problems and are there any intentions of fixing it if it has not been done so already ? vikas@nisc.jvnc.net (609) 258-2400
stanonik@nprdc.navy.mil (Ron Stanonik) (11/04/90)
The negative uid also makes for large accounting files. Yes, most of the file is just a big hole between your last uid and 64K, but files with large holes are suprises waiting to happen. If you copy the file, or restore after a crash, voila, filesystem full. We gave nobody a small positive uid (eg, 98). Ron Ron Stanonik stanonik@nprdc.navy.mil ucsd!nprdc!stanonik