From: James Gray <james@...>
Date: 2009-01-29T01:02:16+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:21641] Re: UID Too Big, A Bug?

On Jan 28, 2009, at 9:45 AM, James Gray wrote:

> On Jan 27, 2009, at 4:45 PM, James Gray wrote:
>
>> Is this a bug in Ruby?
>>
>> $ sudo ruby -r etc -e 'nobody = Etc.getpwnam("nobody"); p nobody;  
>> Process.uid = nobody.uid'
>> #<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>
>> -e:1:in `uid=': bignum too big to convert into `long' (RangeError)
>> 	from -e:1
>
> It looks like this was reported as a bug years ago:
>
> http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/8897
>
> I wonder why it has gone unfixed for so long.  I'll add it to the  
> new tracker and see if it can get any attention there�

More data:  Ruby 1.9 seems to handle it better, but still not totally  
correct:

http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/1068

James Edward Gray II