I think on linux (most systems I ran into actually), UIDs and GIDs are numerical with just a "human friendly" translation (from passwd/group. If you extract a tar file, for example, and the owner/group (numerically) does not exist on the target system, you get to see the 'old' uid/gid from the src system. On 3/3/21 8:06 AM, Bernstein, Noam CIV USN NRL (6393) Washington DC (USA) via CentOS wrote: > Does anyone understand why there exists a "--numeric-owner" flag? I replied off-list with the same information as others posted here, but the existence and docs for that flag at least imply that the default is usernames, not UIDs. > > Noam > > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos