POSIX and uid_t resp. gid_t

Chris Faylor cgfATcygnus.com
Mon Sep 13 14:24:00 GMT 1999


On Mon, Sep 13, 1999 at 11:25:12PM +0200, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
>DJ Delorie wrote:
>> 
>> > How are the datatypes of uid_t and gid_t defined in POSIX?
>> 
>> "All of the types listed in Table 2-1 shall be arithmetic types;"
>
>Thanks for the fast reply.
>
>This isn't the answer, I hoped to get. The problem is, that in
>a WinNT environment an arithmetic type isn't enough to get
>the information of the user and the group of an object.
>The loose translation via /etc/passwd and /etc/group will
>never be able, to reflect the ownership of objects.
>
>My idea was, to change uid_t and gid_t to the SID datatype.
>The [fl]stat-calls would return complete ownership info.
>This would be transparent to applications which never do
>"id arithmetic" as e.g. ls(1).
>
>It's too bad...

I know that some Unixes have implemented access control lists.
If you want a model to follow that might be the way to go.
I know that Digital UNIX implements this, for instance.

-chris


More information about the Cygwin-developers mailing list