Re: [ ruby-Bugs-5822 ] Ruby's 'etc' module cannot handle the UID of OS X 'nobody' properly

On Sep 20, 2006, at 8:30 PM, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:

> In message "Re: [ ruby-Bugs-5822 ] Ruby's 'etc' module cannot  
> handle the UID of OS X 'nobody' properly"
>     on Thu, 21 Sep 2006 03:13:06 +0900, <[e-mail]>  
> writes:
>
> |Initial Comment:
> |Try this (on a mac, to get the full reflection of the problem):
> |--
> |#!/usr/bin/env ruby
> |
> |require 'etc'
> |
> |p Etc.getpwnam('nobody')
> |p Etc.getpwuid(4294967294)
> |--
> |
> |Apparently OS X assigns -1 to nobody in some places, and ruby is  
> hitting one of those places. However, the underlying problem seems  
> to be that Etc can output a value in some of it's calls that it  
> can't accept as a parameter.
>
> Would anybody report what happens when we run the above script on OSX?
> I'm not sure the exact situation.

Here it is on 1.8.4 for reference:

% irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'etc'
=> true
irb(main):002:0> p Etc.getpwnam('nobody')
#<struct Struct::Passwd name="nobody", passwd="*", uid=-2, gid=-2,  
gecos="Unprivileged User", dir="/var/empty", shell="/usr/bin/false",  
change=0, uclass="", expire=0>
=> nil
irb(main):003:0> p Etc.getpwuid(4294967294)
RangeError: bignum too big to convert into `long'
         from (irb):3:in `getpwuid'
         from (irb):3
         from :0
irb(main):004:0> RUBY_VERSION
=> "1.8.4"
irb(main):005:0> RUBY_PLATFORM
=> "powerpc-darwin8.4.0"


Jim Freeze