Aduke.1436 net.news utzoo!decvax!duke!trt Tue Dec 1 22:58:22 1981 Re: watmath.1128: user numbers The "A" version of news handles re-assigned uids fairly painlessly. Each time an article is inserted the .uindex file is matched with /etc/passwd to drop deleted entries and add new ones. The only problem occurs if a uid is deallocated and then reallocated with no intervening article submission--an unlikely event these days. Almost any version of A news handles uids up to 4000, and some (like at Berkeley) handle them up to 64k. I am sure B news is equally proficient in this matter. News is handled on a strictly per-uid basis for several reasons, one of them being security in identification (it is easy to fake your login name, for example). I object to a .msgsrc file cluttering up everyone's home directory. It is a constant drain on the efficiency of the filesystem. It is also relatively wasteful of disk space. I would much prefer to hash .uindex. Tom Truscott (duke!trt) ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.