*BSD News Article 39577


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From: jcw@mti.sgi.com (J.C. Webber III)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun.admin,comp.os.unix,comp.sys.sun.managers,comp.unix.admin,comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: /etc/group: long lines
Date: 16 Dec 1994 03:25:31 GMT
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Lines: 40
Distribution: na
Message-ID: <3cr1bb$aq9@miranda.mti.sgi.com>
References: <D0tCFv.E6o@itex.jct.ac.il>
NNTP-Posting-Host: oblio.mti.sgi.com
Keywords: group

In <D0tCFv.E6o@itex.jct.ac.il> roman@shekel.jct.ac.il (haim İhoward¨ roman) writes:

>Our systems are SunOS 4.1.1 & SunOS 4.1.3

>One of the entries in our /etc/group file is getting too long.  It is
>already over 1024 characters.  Users near the end of this line are NOT
>listed as part of this group.

>Is there some way to define sets of users & enter these sets instead
>of individual users?  Two ideas are:

>	use NIS netgroups instead of users

>	define groups in terms of other groups

>Unfortunately, as far as I know, none of these are possible.

>I will try to check these news groups, but I would appreciate answers
>being mailed directly to roman@brachot.jct.ac.il.

We had the same problem here.  How we solved it was to divide the
group in two.  For example, our hw group is now:

hw::1039:hw1,hw2
hw1::1039:LIST_OF_USERS_FROM_A_to_M
hw2::1039:LIST_OF_USERS_FROM_N_to_Z

works fine for us.  You'll notice that the group id is the same for
all three entries.  

There was one problem with a routine in perl called getgroup (something
like that).  We only had one user that was using that call in a script
and he found another way to resolve his task.  He was using it to verify
a user was a member of that group.  I don't remember what his work-around
was, sorry.
--
J.C. Webber III        jcw@mti.sgi.com jcw@jumper.corp.sgi.com (home)
Systems Administrator  email beeper: jcw_p@mti.sgi.com 
Silicon Graphics, Inc  Tel (415)390-4120   Fax (415)390-6174
"Comparing Dos to UNIX is like comparing a mix-master to a chef's kitchen"