@ub & @cb issues

[Bill Vermillion]

On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 03:58:59PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth thus spoke:
> On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 04:04:21PM -0400, Fairlight wrote:
> > Jay Ashworth cast forth these immortal, mystical words:
> > > On Tue, Apr 20, 2004 at 03:28:40PM -0400, Tim Fischer wrote:

> > > > This is a pretty weird one. For some users, when I have
> > > > *@cb or *@ub on a screen, report or browse, instead
> > > > of showing the user id (sueb or dz - no more than 3
> > > > characters) I get #-552 or something similar. Has anyone
> > > > seen this before?

> > > > I'm not really sure what kind of info to include - I'm
> > > > on Solaris 9 running FP 5.0.13D4. Happens in d and
> > > > rreport/clerk.

> > > I rather strongly suspect that Solaris permits unsigned
> > > shorts for UID's, and your filePro does not... and that you
> > > have users with UID's higher than 32767.

> > Solaris 5.7:

> > /usr/include/sys/types.h:typedef        int     uid_t;                  /*
> > UID type             */

> > No idea what they're doing in newer versions. I note that
> > they updated this from a long and have the long marked as
> > "historical" in the comments.

See my other note on that.

> > What you said certainly would make sense for the negative
> > number presented though, wouldn't it?

> Indeed it would, though why *the solaris version of filePro*
> wouldn't get it right is interesting. Tim tell me that the
> default starting UID for Solaris is 60000...

That's a bizarre starting point since so many UID in the high 60K
range are set for 'nouser', 'nobody', and other accounts that are
to have no login privledges.  I would think they should have
started higher than that.

> though I suspect that the problem *really* is just that their
> useradd utility, like SCO's, builds on after the highest UID it
> can find in the password file, with no upper limit... which is
> sort of dumb design.

Ah - proof that the SCO is in there :-)

But doesn't the SCO just start at the last user ID  you've added.
What happens if you add the typical 'nouser' at the top of the
list.  You'd surely run out of IDs before long :-)

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com