James Wilkinson wrote:
What are you attempting to talk to? Unix and Unix-like systems used to use 16 bit user numbers because no-one expected a Unix box to have more than 60 000 users.
Unfortunately, with centralised authentication schemes and large organisations, that assumption became false: it did become theoretically possible that any one of 100 000 users might log into a Unix computer. So user IDs (and group IDs) were extended to 32 bits. Having a nfsnobody user in the middle of umpteen-thousand normal user IDs was considered confusing, so it was moved.
There are still some operating systems around that haven't changed (often due to compatibility concerns).
In your case, either you'll have to limit Fedora to 60 000 users and use 65534 as the nfsnobody userID, or you'll have to reconfigure the "other" computer(s) to use 32 bit userIDs.
Hope this helps,
James.
yes sir. thanks james. i do appreciate the explanation and it makes sense. but if i have 2 servers, identical fc installations with the default 32 bit number, i get this -2 is too big error. i guess that's the root of the problem. i thought i might be missing something else in my config that was leading to that. putting it at 65534 makes things work instantly, which is what i'll do since i am no where near 100,000 users :)