Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.4bsd
Subject: Re: NFS ID mapping (was: cpio - segmentation violation)
Keywords: cpio, negative UID
Message-ID: <10463@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 28 Jun 89 03:59:31 GMT
References: <1120@servax0.essex.ac.uk> <10406@smoke.BRL.MIL> <1839@auspex.auspex.com>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 16

In article <1839@auspex.auspex.com> guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes:
>I suspect future SunOS releases, and the NFS source releases derived
>from them, will follow 4.xBSD and S5 and have unsigned UIDs ...

Great, the negative IDs were a hassle.

>Separate issue(s): 1) RFS-style mapping has, I think, been implemented
>by Cray, and 2) RFS also has, I think, the same notion of a "nobody" UID.

Given a choice between the Yellow Pages and RFS approaches to ID mapping,
I much prefer the RFS style.  Rather than adopt Yellow Pages here when we
first installed NFS, we tossed YP and instead went to a "campus-wide"
global UID scheme.  I'm not recommending that, but it shows what low
regard some sites had for YP.

I don't claim to be an expert, I just watched this stuff happen.