[OpenAFS] Re: [Slightly OT] changing UID of a user to 1

[Madhusudan Singh]

On Sunday 28 August 2005 3:39 pm, Russ Allbery wrote: 

> Madhusudan Singh <singh.madhusudan@gmail.com> writes:
> >> That m_singh is a member of system:administrators makes no difference
> >> to how you would change the AFS UID.  The answer is, you can't (at
> >> least so far as I know; I welcome correction from anyone else).  You
> >> have to create a new user with a different name and the new UID, add it
> >> to the AFS groups that the old user was in, delete the old user, and
> >> then pts rename the new user to the old user.  I think it actually may
> >> be somewhat difficult for you to do this, because in order to do it you
> >> need to be able to authenticate as a different user who's also in
> >> system:administrators or you'll lose access when you pts delete the old
> >> user and then won't be able to finish the renaming of the new user to
> >> something that matches the Kerberos principal.  This may be a bit
> >> tricky when you don't control the KDC and can't create a new principal.
> >
> > Well, that seems to leave only one option. Change the Unix ID of the
> > user in question to 1. How do I :
> >
> > Change the UID of the user "daemon" to something else (say 11), change
> > all the ownerships on all the files owned by it on the system
> > consistently and make sure that no processes crash.
>
> I wouldn't really recommend this.  The system probably isn't going to like
> it, and then you'd have to maintain it forever.  I'd recommend instead to
> ask your local Kerberos administrator to temporarily create you a second
> identity that you can add to system:administrators and use to do the delet
> and recreate of your regular principal.
>
> This is another good reason to use a separate admin principal from your
> regular principal, one that I'd not thought about before.

Ok. I tried the following : 

Created a second user (bnl4) and added it to system:administrators. Then 
deleted the old user (m_singh) from the system using:

pts delete $1
vos remove -id user.$1.backup
fs rmmount /afs/omega.domain.edu/user/$1/OldFiles
vos remove -id user.$1
fs rmmount /afs/omega.domain.edu/user/$1

Now if I try to add it, I get the error message :

'/afs/omega.domain.edu/user/m_singh/OldFiles' is a mount point for volume 
'#user.m_singh.backup'


There is no such volume (after deleting the user again).

omega:/afs/omega.domain.edu/user# vos listvol -server omega
Total number of volumes on server omega partition /vicepa: 16
root.afs                          536870912 RW        169 K On-line
root.afs.readonly                 536870913 RO        169 K On-line
root.cell                         536870915 RW          4 K On-line
root.cell.readonly                536870916 RO          4 K On-line
service                           536870921 RW          2 K On-line
user                              536870918 RW          8 K On-line
user.bnl4                         536870939 RW          6 K On-line
user.bnl4.backup                  536870941 BK          2 K On-line
user.heidel                       536870927 RW          6 K On-line
user.heidel.backup                536870929 BK          6 K On-line
user.kemal                        536870933 RW   18038486 K On-line
user.kemal.backup                 536870935 BK   18038486 K On-line
user.krivoire                     536870930 RW          6 K On-line
user.krivoire.backup              536870932 BK          6 K On-line
user.msegal                       536870936 RW    4684846 K On-line
user.msegal.backup                536870938 BK    4684846 K On-line

Total volumes onLine 16 ; Total volumes offLine 0 ; Total busy 0

Total number of volumes on server omega partition /vicepb: 0

Total volumes onLine 0 ; Total volumes offLine 0 ; Total busy 0


What is this ghost volume, and how do I get rid of it ?

omega:/afs/omega.domain.edu/user# vos remove -id #user.m_singh.backup
vos:  The field '-id' isn't completed properly
omega:/afs/omega.domain.edu/user# vos remove -id '#user.m_singh.backup'
Can't find volume name '#user.m_singh.backup' in VLDB
VLDB: volume name is illegal

Thanks.