Bug#765499: Policy still thinks UIDs are 32-bit

[Ben Harris <bjh21@cam.ac.uk>]

Package: debian-policy
Version: 3.9.6.0
Severity: minor

I'm not sure if this is the correct route for a Debian user to raise 
policy issues -- please feel free to redirect me elsewhere.

Policy 9.2.2 lists ranges of UIDs and GIDs and what they're used for in 
Debian.  However, it limits itself to UIDs and GIDs below 65536.  As far 
as I can tell, on a modern Debian GNU/Linux i386 system UIDs and GIDs are 
unsigned 32-bit integers.  In consequence, Policy leaves the status of 
UIDs above 65535 undefined, and mis-states the value of (uid_t)(-1).

I'd suggest that at a minimum this section should be updated to (a) 
explicitly reserve the range from 65536 to 4294967294 inclusive for 
end-users, (b) reserve 4294967295 as the 32-bit (uid_t)(-1), and (c) note 
that 65535 is still reserved for compatibility with systems with 16-bit 
UIDs.

--
Ben Harris, University of Cambridge Information Services.