[X-Unix] Owner/Group changes depending on login?

[Jeffrey Ellis]

Hi--

I just viewed the same group of files from the same ext. firewire drive on
the same machine, but booted from two different drives, and two different
OS's.

These files are at the root of Drive A, which contains neither of the boot
volumes.

The first time I viewed Drive A from a 10.3.7 boot volume. This is how it
looked:

drwxrwxrwx   8 jeffrey  admin         272  7 Oct  2004 Act 2a Project
drwxrwxrwx   7 jeffrey  admin         238 12 Sep  2004 Act 2c Project
drwxrwxrwx   4 jeffrey  admin         136  6 May  2005 Andrew - King of the
Wo Project
drwxrwxr-x  45 root     admin        1530 29 May  2002 Applications

Next, I booted from a 10.4.8 volume. Again, these are the same files from
Drive A.

drwxrwxrwx    8 jeffrey  jeffrey       272 Oct  7  2004 Act 2a Project
drwxrwxrwx    7 jeffrey  jeffrey       238 Sep 12  2004 Act 2c Project
drwxrwxrwx    4 jeffrey  jeffrey       136 May  6  2005 Andrew - King of the
Wo Project
drwxrwxr-x   45 jeffrey  jeffrey      1530 May 29  2002 Applications

Now, it has since come to my attention that this is happening because I have
these volumes set to Ignore Ownership in the Finder. So my first question
is, is there some flag which is visible at the command line which would show
this, and if so, what command would I use?

But more ‹ and stranger to me ‹ is that when I¹m sudo¹d, the same volumes
suddenly give ³unknown² as their Owner/Group?? And this is even for volumes
where Ignore Ownership is not checked.

drwxrwxrwx    8 unknown  unknown  -     272 Oct  7  2004 Act 2a Project
drwxrwxrwx    7 unknown  unknown  -     238 Sep 12  2004 Act 2c Project
drwxrwxrwx    4 unknown  unknown  -     136 May  6  2005 Andrew - King of
the Wo Project
drwxrwxr-x   45 unknown  unknown  -    1530 May 29  2002 Applications

I have checked ls  with ­n for these volumes, and indeed, they seem to have
numerical user-ids I don¹t recognize ‹ but then why are they associated with
an Owner name when viewed as a non-superuser, and only display as unknown
when a superuser?

Anyway, the gist of this is I jesdongitit <grin> Can someone explain how all
this works?

All My Best,
Jeffrey