Not really sure what to do about this: $ grep nobody /etc/passwd nobody:*:-2:-2:Unprivileged User:/dev/null:/dev/null $ uname -a Darwin windhund.schwern.org 6.4 Darwin Kernel Version 6.4: Wed Jan 29 18:50:42 PST 2003; root:xnu/xnu-344.26.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc $ perl -wle 'print scalar getpwnam("nobody")' 4294967294 passwd in /usr/include/pwd.h looks normal: struct passwd { char *pw_name; /* user name */ char *pw_passwd; /* encrypted password */ uid_t pw_uid; /* user uid */ gid_t pw_gid; /* user gid */ time_t pw_change; /* password change time */ char *pw_class; /* user access class */ char *pw_gecos; /* Honeywell login info */ char *pw_dir; /* home directory */ char *pw_shell; /* default shell */ time_t pw_expire; /* account expiration */ }; and uid_t is defined in sys/types.h as: typedef u_int32_t uid_t; /* user id */ and u_int32_t is in ppc/types.h as an unsigned int as you'd expect: typedef unsigned int u_int32_t; As far as I can tell its perfectly normal for nobody to be set to -2 on OS X, at least in Apple's universe. I noticed this because it meant perldoc couldn't drop privledges. It kept trying to setuid to 2**32-2. -- If I got anything to say, I'll say it with lead. -- Jon WayneThread Next