OSEC

Neohapsis is currently accepting applications for employment. For more information, please visit our website www.neohapsis.com or email hr@neohapsis.com
Postfix Archives: Re: 64K User Barrier on Linux

Re: 64K User Barrier on Linux

Ken Gunderson (webweaverrmci.net)
Wed, 24 Nov 1999 22:23:17 -0700

At 07:06 PM 11/24/99 -0800, Tom wrote:
>
>On Wed, 24 Nov 1999, Ken Gunderson wrote:
>
>> Greets All:
>>
>> I was talking with a guy today who mentioned that their server would soon
>> max out at 64K users. They said it was a Linux thing and were looking at
>> other Unix clones. The only reason I see this maxing out here is if they
>> were authenticating via passwd, yet I assume they would be using POP before
>> SMTP and an SQL database. Is there some other factor that's eluding me
>> here? (They're running qmail)
>>
>> Ciao--Ken
>> http://www.y2know.org/safari/
>>
>> FreeBSD- Viagra for your server ;^)
>
>
> Uids on many systems are limited to 16 bits. If each user is
>given a uid, you will run out at 64K-1.

Excuse my ignorance, but when you're using pop before smtp authentication
via SQL database can't you bypass this by having single UID own all the
mailboxes and have POP daemon configured not to grant access to different
mailboxes w/o reauthentication? Particularly since most ISP's already have
such a database for their Raduis servers anyways?

I've never done anything on this grand a scale, but rather pieced the above
together from my various lurks. If I'm totally out in left field here,
please enlighten me. How do portal outfits like HotMail and Yahoo mail,
etc. handle this?

Ciao-- Ken
http://www.y2know.org/safari

Failure is not an option- it comes bundled with your Microsoft product.

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b3 on Thu Nov 25 1999 - 01:11:19 CST