Order in /etc/group

[Thamm]

Hi.
We have a user, let us call him "pete" who has to be included into a lot of groups.
Now I added him into a new group (group20).
After a "su - peter" "groups" gives:
peter group2 group2 group3 ... group20
Despite the fact a "ll" of a directory, which belongs to group20 with permissions 770 does not work.

Now I changed the order of /etc/group: I put group20 into the the first lines.
Result of "groups"-command:
peter group20 group2 group3 ...
Now the "ll" works.
What is the reason of this behaviour?

Regards,
Stefan.

[Pete Randall]

Stefan,

From the man page for "group":

"The file /etc/group exists to supply names for each
group, and to support changing groups by means of the newgrp utility
(see newgrp(1))."

In order from Pete to benefit from the additional groups he belongs to, he would have to issue the newgrp command. Try that!


Pete

[Kevin Wright]

pwgrd perhaps? The order of /etc/group is independant. You should not list a user in his PGID field in this file.

[Steven E. Protter]

With HP-UX 11.11 there is a hard limit on how many groups a user can be in. That is 20. It can not be changed. You may be hitting that limit.

SEP

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

My best guess is that you have exceeded the maximum number of allowable groups for a user. See the value 'NGROUPS' as defined in /usr/include/sys/param.h. By rearranging the entry you have basically robbed Peter to pay Paul so that now another group "fell off the end".


I assume that you have linked /etc/group and /etc/logingroup so that no newgrp command is required.

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi Stefan,

If I remember correctly, we ran into this limit sometime back. It was allowing only a maximum of 20 groups.

When you changed the order of the group, will "Pete" be able to access files belonging to group 'group19' now the last group?. If not, then you are hitting that limit.

-Sri

[Thamm]

Hi,
I asked HP.
The maximim 20 is hard coded.

In 2005 they will change that value.

Thank you.


Stefan.