[CentOS] Determine next UID number

Thu Oct 14 01:27:39 UTC 2010
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

On 10/13/10 6:42 PM, Stephen Harris wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 13, 2010 at 06:16:26PM -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
>> On 10/13/2010 6:01 PM, Stephen Harris wrote:
>>> lastlog is a sparse file.  How it looks and how big it is are two
>>> different things.
>>
>> And how long it takes to copy if you back the system up is a 3rd thing.
>
> Get better backup software that understands sparse files.  You'll have the
> same problem with dbm files and similar.
>
>>    But if you've truncated to 32 bits it might be tolerable anyway.  On
>
> The bit-size of the OS is irrelevant to the maximum file size.  Otherwise
> we'd still be stuck at 2Gb (maybe 4Gb) files on 32bit systems.

It isn't related to the OS maximum file size, it has to do with what happens 
when you take -1 as an unsigned integer:
nfsnobody:x:4294967294:4294967294:Anonymous NFS User:/var/lib/nfs:/sbin/nologin
and then use that as the key into a sparse file the way lastlog works.  Seems to 
be fixed now though, I don't see the big lastlog on any of the remaining Centos3 
boxes I can find.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesell at gmail.com