This is also a major problem in many universities. Most are
moving towards some form of centralised authentication and
16-bit UID Linux can't participate in that at present. Obviously
this makes Windows NT a more attractive operating system choice
than would otherwise be the case.
The time savings in centralised authentication are significant.
A time-use survey of end-user support staff at the University
of Adelaide estimates about 10% of worked hours could be saved,
with this figure being almost 100% for the week at the start of
the academic year. Given the huge demands on support staff's time
at the start of the semester, this sort of saving translates directly
into improved service and a better life for sysadms.
The 32-bit UID patches are being used in production systems and are
well maintained. If you are running Red Hat Linux you can trivially
apply them. See:
http://www.engin.umich.edu/caen/systems/Linux/highuids/
With some work you can then do authentication against the
corporate LDAP server, use NFS servers to hold all home
directories and use HSM tape storage.
It's more than time that these patches made it into the development
kernel. Part of the problem seems to be that most Linux kernel
hackers don't work in environments with large head counts and
don't realise that 32-bit UIDs are more necessary for corporate-wide
support of Linux on the desktop than journaling file systems or
good SMP.
Regards,
glen
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