[SunHELP] Permission denied as root

[Nicholas Dronen]

On Tue, Dec 04, 2001 at 01:12:39PM -0900, Matthew Schumacher wrote:
> Ok,
> 
> God no, var isn't /var, its the var in my home directory, and no it is 
> not a mount point.
> 
> I forgot that my home dir is nfs mounted so the description below is 
> obviously the problem, however I don't understand how uid -2 works.  I 
> didn't notice a uid of -2, so what is to deal with that?

If an NFS-mounted directory is exported not to allow root
access, then root's user id gets remapped to -2 (IIRC) in
the NFS packets that get sent to the server.  Perhaps the
server itself maps uid 0 to -2 if the filesystem is exported
not to allow root access; that way a buggy client couldn't
be a security hazard.  My copy of NFS Illustrated should
arrive next week, so ask me later if you'd like a more
precise or detailed explanation.

Regards,

Nicholas Dronen