Editing User identifier (section)

== Alternatives ==

[[NFSv4]] was intended to help avoid numeric identifier collisions by identifying users (and groups) in protocol packets using textual “user@domain” names rather than integer numbers. However, as long as operating-system kernels and local file systems continue to use integer user identifiers, this comes at the expense of additional translation steps (using idmap daemon processes), which can introduce additional failure points if local UID mapping mechanisms or databases get configured incorrectly, lost, or out of sync. The “@domain” part of the user name could be used to indicate which authority allocated a particular name, for example in form of

* a [[Kerberos (protocol)|Kerberos]] realm name
* an [[Active Directory]] domain name
* the name of an operating-system vendor (for distribution-specific allocations)
* the name of a computer (for device-specific allocations)

But in practice many existing implementations only allow setting the NFSv4 domain to a fixed value, thereby rendering it useless.