sshfs - user and group permissions

[David Fletcher]

On Sat, 2011-01-01 at 12:54 -0700, Smoot Carl-Mitchell wrote:

> Easiest fix is to get the uid and gid numbers to be the same on all the
> systems.  You can use the usermod command to do this:
> 

Then, of course, the user I tried this with becomes unable to access his
own encrypted home folder. I suppose I should have expected this.
Fortunately it works again now I've put his account number back as it
was originally.

This to me just seems ridiculous. Why should it matter what the uid/gid
numbers are on the other machine after it's been given a valid user ID
and password? I don't get it. I thought sshfs was supposed to mount a
remote directory as if it's a local directory, but it doesn't work
unless the uid/gids on each machine are the same! Surely this can't be
correct?

Dave