Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sri-spam!ames!lll-lcc!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!botter!wundt
From: wundt@wundt.psy.vu.nl (Wundt Administrator)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Arbitron "Users" count is very wrong under BSD
Message-ID: <181@wundt.psy.vu.nl>
Date: 21 Jan 88 09:02:59 GMT
References: <15538@onfcanim.UUCP> <247@bacchus.DEC.COM>
Reply-To: wundt@psy.vu.nl (Wundt Administrator)
Organization: VU Psychologie, Amsterdam
Lines: 24

There are several suggestions given other than last | sort
to count the number of users.

One of these requires that "active" users be grouped within
a contiguous range of uid numbers, but you can sort.

See the arbitron.sh (the program ! as distributed) for all the suggestions
given.

The first example I read about (complaining) said that only
13 of the 27 users were real. If uucp daemons, etc. are kept
in the range 0-20 or 0-100 (then root dosn't get counted either)

this could solve one problem. Further, users who are not
allowed to read news could be given very high UIDs, e.g.
greater than 10,000 (or 1000).

The "problem" with this suggestion requires that the password
file be "manageable". If "process- demon- users" are spread throughout
it probably won't be fixed.

(I'd include the text here, but if you are really interested,
read the distribution next time around (if you haven't got it on hand)

michael felt