From: James Gray <redmine@...>
Date: 2009-01-29T01:00:05+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:21640] [Bug #1068] Ruby Cannot Handle Some UIDs

Bug #1068: Ruby Cannot Handle Some UIDs
http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/1068

Author: James Gray
Status: Open, Priority: Normal

This shows the main problem:

  $ sudo ruby -r etc -e 'n = Etc.getpwnam("nobody"); p n.uid; Process.uid = n.uid'
  Password:
  ruby 1.8.6 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 287) [i686-darwin9.4.0]
  4294967294
  -e:1:in `uid=': bignum too big to convert into `long' (RangeError)
  	from -e:1

The real UID for the nobody user on my system (Mac OS X 10.5.6) is -2.  Thus it seems at least some systems use signed UID's and Ruby can't handle that.

The above example is from Ruby 1.8.6.  Ruby 1.9 does seem to properly switch users, but it still shows the UID's incorrectly:

  $ sudo ruby_dev -v -r etc -e 'n = Etc.getpwnam("nobody"); p n.uid; Process.uid = n.uid; p Process.uid; p Etc.getpwuid(Process.uid)'
  ruby 1.9.1 (2008-12-30 patchlevel-0 revision 21203) [i386-darwin9.6.0]
  4294967294
  4294967294
  #<struct Struct::Passwd name="nobody", passwd="*", uid=4294967294, gid=4294967294, gecos="Unprivileged User", dir="/var/empty", shell="/usr/bin/false", change=0, uclass="", expire=0>


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