Bug 4603 - user id's over 2^16 don't work
Summary: user id's over 2^16 don't work
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Red Hat Linux
Classification: Retired
Component: basesystem
Version: 6.0
Hardware: i386
OS: Linux
medium
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: David Lawrence
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 1999-08-19 00:15 UTC by jay_lyerly
Modified: 2008-05-01 15:37 UTC (History)
0 users

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 1999-08-21 20:10:36 UTC

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Description jay_lyerly 1999-08-19 00:15:03 UTC 
User id's with values greater than 65536 ( or is it 65535? )
don't work.  For instance, I can create a user with uid
100,000.  That user can't log in.  Watching syslog during
the login shows a session open for the user, then
immediately close.  'su' spits at the username with a
invalid arguement error and refuses to set the userid to
100,000.

This has become an issue at NCSU where the eos/unity system
now has ~70,000 users.
Comment 1 Bill Nottingham 1999-08-21 20:10:59 UTC 
The kernel's UID type is only 16 bits. Sorry. When this
is fixed in the kernel, it will work elsewhere.

You might try experimental 32-bit uid support, available at:
http://www.engin.umich.edu/caen/systems/Linux/highuids
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