What is a UID?
Every user on a system running Unix has a unique integer associated with their uniqname. This integer, known as a UID, is used by the system as a shorthand identifier for a user. Most modern versions of Unix can support UIDs with a value from 0 up to about 60,000. Because we share our password file across UMCE services that access IFS, that means we can have at most 60,000 different uniqnames. Recently, there have been more customers requesting uniqnames than there are available UIDs below 60,000. We haven’t been able to create the requested uniqnames until more UIDs become available. In July, we upgraded to systems that support UIDs greater than 60000, so hopefully, this will not be a problem in the near future. In fact, it shouldn’t be a problem on the (now) current system.
