Re: numeric UIDs

["J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org>]

On Tue, Aug 03, 2010 at 10:02:16PM -0400, Trond Myklebust wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-08-03 at 18:42 -0400, J. Bruce Fields wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 03, 2010 at 06:31:15PM -0400, Trond Myklebust wrote:
> > > We know it has a bunch of problems,
> > > not least the one that limits ngroups <= 16, and the fact that it relies
> > > on uids (as opposed to login names) being the same on client and server
> > > so why not try to fix those limitations?
> > 
> > Sure, that would be great.
> > 
> > Again, that doesn't address the complaints above.
> 
> Yes it does.

See the stated scenario:

	http://marc.info/?l=linux-nfs&m=128080127215350&w=2

It's a dumb client making a copy of a filesystem over NFS for backup.

It's not true that this case could be dealt with by an auth_sys
replacement that uses names instead of id's.

(You could argue that it's a hypothetical case, crazy, not important, or
whatever--just not that it has much to do with the authentication
flavor.

Personally I think it *is* of at least some importance, since anyone
depending on that sort of behavior will see their systems stop working
if they switch from v2/v3 to v4.  The v2/v3 install base being massive
compared to v4's, the success of v4+ depends in part on reducing the
chances of that kind of thing happening.)

--b.