[Gllug] Problem with users (authing over Active Directory) not being about to run software, but local users can.

Matthew King matthew.king at monnsta.net
Thu Oct 15 12:58:47 UTC 2009


John Edwards <john at cornerstonelinux.co.uk> writes:

> In the old days it used to be a 16 bit unsigned int, so 65535
> (2^16 -1). Almost all modern UNIX-like systems now use a 32 bit
> signed int, so 2147483647 (2^31 -1).

Is there any reason why when this was implemented it was decided to use
31 instead of 32 bits? I know that 4 billion users is unlikely but it
seems a bit odd to use an unsigned instead of a signed int.

Assuming of course that negative UIDs are illegal.

Matthew

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