initgroups userid is in too many groups

[Simon P White]

On one of our servers I'm encountering the above error. Does anyone know the maximum number of groups a userid can be in and can this be changed. The userid in question is in 20 groups. This is a HPUX 11.00 system

[Ivan Krastev · Accepted solution]

The number of groups is limited to 20:


Yes, 20 groups per user is still the limit for HP-UX.

The limit is defined in /usr/include/limits.h, as this:

# define NGROUPS_MAX 20 /* Maximum number of simultaneous
supplementary group IDs per
process */


See kb document KBRC00017206.

regards,
ivan

[Simon P White]

Ivan,

Thanks for that - i don't have access to the KB. I have checked the /usr/include and that line is commented out. The limit I'm seeing is 14 on my system. How do I change this limit?

[Ivan Krastev]

It's hardcoded in kernel and cannot be changed. There is no tunable parameter for that.

regards,
ivan

[Simon P White]

Ivan,

If I uncomment that in the /usr/include file will it increase the limit to 20 when I next reboot?

[Matti_Kurkela]

The files in /usr/include just describe the API the applications can use. /usr/include/limits.h describes the various limits in HP-UX kernel and system libraries, so that the applications can adapt to those limits.

Changing the description of the API does not change the actual API.

MK