entering 3000 lines in vi editor

[Vishu]

Hi guys,

i have to add 3000 users in a group as a secondary group. when i am doing vi and try to save the file after entering these users against their group. it gives an error:-

line too long

Please help on this as how can i enter my users in the group file.

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi:

This must be an early (< 11.0) release.

You have reached 'vi' limits or for that matter the system's LINE_MAX.

There is nothing to prevent you from declaring the same group multiple times with differing lists of users where the whole line remains in limits.

Regards!

...JRF...

[OldSchool]

also see the answers here:

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=959497

[Vishu]

well, actually i have to update those users in NIS groups. i tried that also by creating multiple groups, but when i update the NIS maps, it takes only one group and leave others.

and when i do with one group and all users, it gives "Line too long" error.

i am able to enter groups by having same GID, but different groupname...but it does not solve my purpose.

Any parameter, command or environment variable, i have to edit to do this.

Please suggest..

[Hein van den Heuvel]

You don't actually like to enter 3000+ users using 'vi' do you? That's nasty!

So why don't you do something convenient for yourself, like EXCEL or a VI for shorter lines and then use a tool like AWK or PERL or a script to glue it together. We have computers to help no?!

If you used a convention of potentially repeated group name in column 1 followed by a list of user then you could use something like:

$ cat tmp.txt
aap one two three
aap een twee drie
noot four
mies five six seven
mies vijf zes zeven
mies cinque six sept

$ perl -ne 'chomp; m/(\S+)(\s+\S.*)/;if ($1 ne $x) {print qq($x $y\n) if $x; $x=$1; $y=$2}
.=$2}; print "$x $y$2" if eof' tmp.txt

aap one two three een twee drie
noot four
mies five six seven vijf zes zeven cinque six sept cinque six sept

BYu can use any format you like.
Like "--- name" to start a fresh group, and the users 'naked' on the next lines.

But where do those names come from? Surely from some computer output? How about using that form input?

hth.
Hein.

[Suraj K Sankari]

Hi,

If you are not able to open your passwd file into vi then do one think ftp your passwd file into your desktop open in excel and add secondry group save as the file as suppose npasswd.csv
now open your npasswd.csv file into a notepad find and replace all , with ; and save it

put again into /tmp/npasswd.csb
make a cp of your passwd file
cp /etc/passwd /etc/passwd.today's date
then mv /tmp/npasswd.csv /etc/passwd

Suraj

[Dennis Handly]

>entering 3000 character lines in vi editor

You can use vim instead.

[OldSchool]

"You can use vim instead."

you could, but, IIRC, you still run into issues with the max length of a line in the group file itself.

[Atul Ram Sahu]

try vipw command , its exclusively for passwd file

[Suraj K Sankari]

HI Atul,
>>try vipw command , its exclusively for passwd file

insted of giving vi /etc/passwd, vipw is for edit /etc/passwd into vi editor no need to give /etc/passwd again.

just give vipw it will open your /etc/passwd file.


Suraj