Documentation/highuid.txt

   1 ===================================================
   2 Notes on the change from 16-bit UIDs to 32-bit UIDs
   3 ===================================================
   4
   5 :Author: Chris Wing <wingc@umich.edu>
   6 :Last updated: January 11, 2000
   7
   8 - kernel code MUST take into account __kernel_uid_t and __kernel_uid32_t
   9   when communicating between user and kernel space in an ioctl or data
  10   structure.
  11
  12 - kernel code should use uid_t and gid_t in kernel-private structures and
  13   code.
  14
  15 What's left to be done for 32-bit UIDs on all Linux architectures:
  16
  17 - Disk quotas have an interesting limitation that is not related to the
  18   maximum UID/GID. They are limited by the maximum file size on the
  19   underlying filesystem, because quota records are written at offsets
  20   corresponding to the UID in question.
  21   Further investigation is needed to see if the quota system can cope
  22   properly with huge UIDs. If it can deal with 64-bit file offsets on all
  23   architectures, this should not be a problem.
  24
  25 - Decide whether or not to keep backwards compatibility with the system
  26   accounting file, or if we should break it as the comments suggest
  27   (currently, the old 16-bit UID and GID are still written to disk, and
  28   part of the former pad space is used to store separate 32-bit UID and
  29   GID)
  30
  31 - Need to validate that OS emulation calls the 16-bit UID
  32   compatibility syscalls, if the OS being emulated used 16-bit UIDs, or
  33   uses the 32-bit UID system calls properly otherwise.
  34
  35   This affects at least:
  36
  37         - iBCS on Intel
  38
  39         - sparc32 emulation on sparc64
  40           (need to support whatever new 32-bit UID system calls are added to
  41           sparc32)
  42
  43 - Validate that all filesystems behave properly.
  44
  45   At present, 32-bit UIDs _should_ work for:
  46
  47         - ext2
  48         - ufs
  49         - isofs
  50         - nfs
  51         - coda
  52         - udf
  53
  54   Ioctl() fixups have been made for:
  55
  56         - ncpfs
  57         - smbfs
  58
  59   Filesystems with simple fixups to prevent 16-bit UID wraparound:
  60
  61         - minix
  62         - sysv
  63         - qnx4
  64
  65   Other filesystems have not been checked yet.
  66
  67 - The ncpfs and smpfs filesystems cannot presently use 32-bit UIDs in
  68   all ioctl()s. Some new ioctl()s have been added with 32-bit UIDs, but
  69   more are needed. (as well as new user<->kernel data structures)
  70
  71 - The ELF core dump format only supports 16-bit UIDs on arm, i386, m68k,
  72   sh, and sparc32. Fixing this is probably not that important, but would
  73   require adding a new ELF section.
  74
  75 - The ioctl()s used to control the in-kernel NFS server only support
  76   16-bit UIDs on arm, i386, m68k, sh, and sparc32.
  77
  78 - make sure that the UID mapping feature of AX25 networking works properly
  79   (it should be safe because it's always used a 32-bit integer to
  80   communicate between user and kernel)