High UID support for Linux

Jon Leonard (jbwl@umich.edu)
Thu, 19 Nov 1998 17:38:39 -0500

Has anybody looked seriously at supporting 32 bit UIDs on Linux? We'd
really like to make Linux a commodity at Umich, but with a user base of
about 100,000, high UIDs are an absolute requirement. I've only just
started looking at this, but scanning the include files, it would appear
that some platforms already support high UIDs, but not i386.

Just for grins, I tried changing the typedef in linux/types.h and
recompiling the kernel. Wouldn't even boot. Then I noticed that the
uid and gid fields in ext2 inodes are 16 bits. So it seems like this is
a project, not than a hack. (This was on 2.0.35.)

There's enough interest in this on campus that we can throw some
resources at it. If no one else has this one, we could probably do it.
If someone is doing it, how do I get in touch? Comments? Advice

Regards,
Jon
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Leonard jbwl@umich.edu
CycleStealer, School of Information, Umich +1 (734) 936-7255
PGP key ID=0BB0B1D5, fingerprint=FBC31658 A9EEF2E1 949ABD31 31255FA5
"Steel coasters roll, but wooden ones ROCK!"

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