Throughout BLFS, many packages install programs that run as daemons or in some way should have a user or group name assigned. Generally these names are used to map a user ID (uid) or group ID (gid) for system use. Generally the specific uid or gid numbers used by these applications are not significant. The exception of course, is that root has a uid and gid of 0 (zero) that is indeed special. The uid values are stored in /etc/passwd and the gid values are found in /etc/group.

Customarily, Unix systems classify users and groups into two categories: system users and regular users. The system users and groups are given low numbers and regular users and groups have numeric values greater than all the system values. The cutoff for these numbers is found in two parameters in the /etc/login.defs configuration file. The default UID_MIN value is 1000 and the default GID_MIN value is 100. If a specific uid or gid value is not specified when creating a user with useradd or a group with groupadd the values assigned will always be above these cutoff values.

Additionally, the Linux Standards Base recommends that system uid and gid values should be below 100.

Below is a table of suggested uid/gid values used in BLFS. These can be changed as desired, but provide a suggested set of consistent values.

One value that is missing is 65534. This value is customarily assigned to the user nobody and group nogroup and is unnecessary. The issue is explained in more detail in the first note in the NFS Utilities Installation section.

Last updated on 2005-08-01 13:29:19 -0600