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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.misc:1279 comp.os.386bsd.questions:6016 Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!sdd.hp.com!nigel.msen.com!caen!usenet.coe.montana.edu!bsd.coe.montana.edu!nate From: nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.386bsd.questions Subject: Re: FreeBSD, NetBSD coexist and share filesystem! Date: 18 Oct 1993 14:59:15 GMT Organization: Montana State University, Bozeman MT Lines: 36 Message-ID: <29ub03$dga@pdq.coe.montana.edu> References: <CExLov.3At@latcs1.lat.oz.au> <CEy3zt.1Lp@festival.ed.ac.uk> <CEyAos.7Kx@veda.is> <CF3Ho5.Jn2@festival.ed.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: bsd.coe.montana.edu In article <CF3Ho5.Jn2@festival.ed.ac.uk>, Richard Tobin <richard@castle.ed.ac.uk> wrote: >In article <CEyAos.7Kx@veda.is> adam@veda.is (Adam David) writes: >>>Unfortunately a number of common utilities (bash, emacs, ls) can't be >>>properly shared because of the changed dbm format. Anything that >>>converts a uid to a username is likely to lose. > >>This is patently untrue. > >The format changed between NetBSD 0.8 and 0.9. The symptom is that >programs will be unable to find usernames (ls prints numeric values >instead, emacs can't find ~user, etc). Perhaps one of the NetBSD >people could give a better description of what changed. The problem is in the password db file, which can't be read to find out the owner. (Or has been said many, many times, the db libraries have been changed and any binary which tried to read the password database format will HAVE to be recompiled in order to work correctly) >If as you say FreeBSD uses the same format, they must have changed >too. Well, yes they've changed the db libraries as well, so folks who used old binaries linked against the old 386bsd libraries would have problems reading the new format. But, the UFS code has no user level changes. Nate -- nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu | Freely available *nix clones benefit everyone, nate@cs.montana.edu | so let's not compete with each other, let's work #: (406) 994-4836 | compete with folks who try to tie us down to home #: (406) 586-0579 | proprietary O.S.'s (Microsloth) - Me