Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 22 Nov 1999 19:17:32 +1030 | From | Glen Turner <> | Subject | Re: What about 32bit uid/gid's? |
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Eugene Crosser wrote: > > Can anyone enlighten me about the status/plans of 32 bit uid/gid > support in the kernel? AFAIK, glibc2 and ext2fs both support 32 > bit uids and only the kernel in between does not. At work, we > have more than 64K "namespace" (we are ISP), and this limitation > prevents us from using Linux for many applications...
This is also a major problem in many universities. Most are moving towards some form of centralised authentication and 16-bit UID Linux can't participate in that at present. Obviously this makes Windows NT a more attractive operating system choice than would otherwise be the case.
The time savings in centralised authentication are significant. A time-use survey of end-user support staff at the University of Adelaide estimates about 10% of worked hours could be saved, with this figure being almost 100% for the week at the start of the academic year. Given the huge demands on support staff's time at the start of the semester, this sort of saving translates directly into improved service and a better life for sysadms.
The 32-bit UID patches are being used in production systems and are well maintained. If you are running Red Hat Linux you can trivially apply them. See:
http://www.engin.umich.edu/caen/systems/Linux/highuids/
With some work you can then do authentication against the corporate LDAP server, use NFS servers to hold all home directories and use HSM tape storage.
It's more than time that these patches made it into the development kernel. Part of the problem seems to be that most Linux kernel hackers don't work in environments with large head counts and don't realise that 32-bit UIDs are more necessary for corporate-wide support of Linux on the desktop than journaling file systems or good SMP.
Regards, glen
-- Earth is a single point of failure
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