[Wylug-help] OSX to Linux Numerical UIDs

[Peter Nix]

Roughly and from, bad, memory...

On the client/standalone version of Macos X local ids are managed by a  
netinfo database inherited from Next. There's a bunch of system ids  
running between -2 and 99. When you setup a new machine the first  
created local, and usually admin, user is 501.

You can, optionally,  set up the client mac to authenticate against an  
LDAP server or an AD server. This works nicely for clusters of student  
machines as it allows  home directories to be kept on servers and  
mounted on whichever client machine the student logs into. The   
current server version of Macos X has the same setup as the client  
plus the option of running an LDAP service which conventionally starts  
creating users at 1000.

Peter

On 18 Jun 2008, at 08:18, John Hodrien wrote:

> On Wed, 18 Jun 2008, Dave Fisher wrote:
>
>> I considered re-setting the Linux UID, but I thought that might be a
>> little inelegant, since OSX counts ordinary users from UID 501,  
>> putting
>> it 499 short of the numbers that Linux uses for ordinary users.
>
> I'd like to know what the logic is behind the 1000.  Certainly  
> picking on the
> linux distro I have to hand:
>
>> From login.defs:
>
> UID_MIN                   500
> UID_MAX                 60000
>
>> From pam.d/system-auth:
>
> auth        requisite     pam_succeed_if.so uid >= 500 quiet
>
> Taking a look at SuSe, we have:
>
> SYSTEM_UID_MIN            100
> SYSTEM_UID_MAX            499
> UID_MIN                  1000
> UID_MAX                 60000
>
> What's it reserving 500-999 for?
>
> jh
>
> -- 
> "Woman was God's second mistake."                    -- Nietzsche
>
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--
Peter Nix, School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies,
Old Mining Building, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK.
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/fine_art/
Eml: p.j.nix at leeds.ac.uk Tel: 0113 343 2580 Fax: 0113 343 1628