endianess of /etc/pwd.db

[Jacques A. Vidrine]

On Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 10:17:41AM +0200, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> 
> Kris ran into this problem:  copying a /etc/pwd.db from one endianess
> to another gave him really weird uid/gid numbers.
> 
> The DB code itself is endianess-agnostic, so the first warning one
> gets is the weird UID/GID.
> 
> Should we make the endianess of this file explicit to prevent this
> pit-fall for our users ?  The cost would be less than epsilon.

I am working in this area recently, and the exact same thought
occurred to me.  I think we should do it.  I would add a file format
version flag, the absence of which indicates the current MD format,
and adjust getpwent/pwd_mkdb accordingly.  Are there any other tools
that would need to be touched?

Cheers,
-- 
Jacques A. Vidrine <nectar at celabo.org>          http://www.celabo.org/
NTT/Verio SME          .     FreeBSD UNIX     .       Heimdal Kerberos
jvidrine at verio.net     .  nectar at FreeBSD.org  .          nectar at kth.se