user and group numbers

Furlinastis · 05-07-2006, 04:12 PM

I just downloaded the source code to firefox and when I untarred it, all the files were owned by user 1004 in group 7750. What does that mean? I don't see this as a problem since I can just chown them, I'm just curious.

btmiller · 05-07-2006, 04:25 PM

It means that whoever tarred up the files had user id 1004 and group id 7750 on whatever system he or she tarred them up on. There is a flag (-p) that preserves attributed like uid, gid, and permissions that the person making the tarball probably used.

Furlinastis · 05-07-2006, 04:38 PM

So in other words, it is of no relevence to someone like me who just wants to compile run? I thought that it might be some special user ID on my system or something.

gilead · 05-07-2006, 05:15 PM

That's right, no real relevance - although you can do something like chown -R username:group firefox-1.x.x with your username:group and whatever the Firefox directory name is so that you don't leave unowned files lying around on your system.