Re: defining system accounts and groups in DCE or AFS

[Jeffrey Carpenter]

>>        And I changed the UID for nobody from -2 to 60001.
>
>Please do not do this.  -2 has the virtue that it's
>unambiguous (i.e., doesn't depend on being stored as
>a signed value of a particular size), and is a clear
>sentinel value outside the normal range of valid UIDs.
>60001 is smack-dab in the middle of the UID space on
>systems that support large UIDs, and will force nearly
>every program that deals with UIDs to make explicit
>checks for that value even if they don't know or care
>about user nobody.

The problem is that this value is not common across operating systems.
Solaris 2 has nobody defined as 60001.


        jeff