Maximum number of groups to which an account can belong

[David Lichtsinn]

Is there a maximum number of groups to which an account can belong? I found a note for HP-UX v9, which says 8, for HP-UX v10, which says 16. How about HP-UX v11 or 11i? I'm guessing the limit is also 16, based on observations. I also found that one can use the "newgrp" command and get into directories previously restricted.

[Stuart Browne]

Umm, are you sure this is supposed to be in here, and not over in the HP-UX forums?

[Steven E. Protter]

I would not assume the limit is still built into HP-UX 11 and 11i.

Might be worth an experiment.

This post may be relavent.

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xf882107d277ad611abdb0090277a778c,00.html

Here is one that says the limit was raised to 20. No link though.

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xc62ccb60e503d6118ff40090279cd0f9,00.html

I cheated big time, clicked a live chat with an HP person, we think its 10 for HP-UX 11.00

[Steven E. Protter]

Hi Stuart, I'm going to post for Dan to move this to HP-UX sysadmin. Hope you are well.

SEP

[Jerome Henry]

BTW,
no limit either on Linux.
J

[Christian Schulze · Accepted solution]

Well, I ran into this problem last week.
Max on HPUX 11.0 is 20

its not changeable,
as file /usr/include/limits.h should not be modified (HP Support)

Christian

[doug hosking]

Christian, it's not just that limits.h should not be modified. It simply doesn't work to do that in most cases. By analogy, editing the specification sheet of a car does not add more power to the engine, no matter how much you wish that it would, or how much you edit the specification sheet. You have to do something to change the actual car before there is any effect. In the case of HP-UX the car has already been built (HP-UX is precompiled when you get it) so editing the specification sheet(the include files) later does not help unless you have full source to HP-UX and all other applications you care about AND recompile everything. Very few people have that option.

Yes, newgrp is a way to get into many groups as long as you don't need to be in them concurrently. Access control lists may also be helpful in working around this limit.

[Geoff Wild]

The limit to groups is:

The length of each line in /etc/group is limited to LINE_MAX, as
defined in . Because of this limit, users should not be
listed in their primary group - only in their additional groups.

LINE_MAX is 2048 Bytes - so, you can have as many groupd that will fit in 2048 Bytes - if you group names are 3 chars - then you get more then if your group names are 15 charchters...

Rgds...Geoff