Subject: Re: [nfsv4] (no subject) - Owner Group attr strings.

From: Stevan Steve Allen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 09:43:52 -0700

>On Mar 3, Spencer wrote:
>
>I don't see any value for a server to return internal string 
>identifiers for owner/group. The client will likely
>not have any reasonable means of mapping them to its
>own APIs for use by the application or end user. 

>From my small world, there seems to be a strong urge to return something 
for owner/owner_group in the event of an -ls/dir command.  Either the 
server internal string (possibly appending @server_domain), or the server 
assigned UID/GID in string format. 

Sorry to say I'm not familiar with the clients view of this topic or the 
reason to map such strings.

>Therefore, the server should not return
>the attributes and let the client default to some user/group 
>understood by the local environment as "not useful".
> Spencer

thx - Steve

---

From: Spencer Shepler <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Mar 2004 10:56:16 -0600

On Mar 2, 2004, at 10:43 AM, Stevan Steve Allen wrote:

> From my small world, there seems to be a strong urge to return 
> something for owner/owner_group in the event of an -ls/dir command. 
>  Either the server internal string (possibly appending 
> @server_domain), or the server assigned UID/GID in string format.  
>
> Sorry to say I'm not familiar with the clients view of this topic or 
> the reason to map such strings.

At least the Solaris client (and most unix derivatives) will take the 
owner/group strings
and map them to the uid/gid integer values that are present in the 
various attribute
structures in APIs like stat().  Therefore, the client will take your 
server's owner/group string
and attempt to map and it will likely end up mapping to "nobody" 
because it is unable
to map it appropriately.  There will be a total loss of information; 
given that you know that
your internal strings don't map to even the uid/gid (I am assuming 
this) it doesn't seem
worthwhile in providing the info.

If there were clients that just passed the owner/group strings back 
through their
local APIs unmapped then there may be some value but I don't know of 
such
clients at this point.

Spencer