Question regarding "Number of users in one group"

From: Kristian Koehntopp <kris_at_oekoalpha.pz-oekosys.uni-kiel.d400.de>
Date: Fri, 19 May 1995 13:55:23 +0200

Two questions answered myself:

kris wrote:
> setgroups(2) and getgroups(2) both mention a limits.h constant called
> NGROUPS_MAX, but if I go looking for it like this
>
> kris_at_oekoalpha /home/kris> grep NGROUPS_MAX /usr/include/limits.h
> #define _POSIX_NGROUPS_MAX 0
>
> I don't find a reasonable number.

That is, because NGROUP_MAX is defined somewhere else and included into
limits.h:

kris_at_oekoalpha /home/kris> cpp | tail

#include <limits.h>

NGROUPS_MAX
^D


# 234 "/usr/include/limits.h"



# 3 ""

32

This is just as documented in group(4).

Another question I was to answer myself:
> I was not aware of the fact that group names can be used in field 4 of the
> group file. The documentation of group(4) only mentions user names. Does
> this really work?

It didn't work for me:

root_at_oekoalpha> cat /etc/group
system:*:0:root,kris,friedel,thomas-c,uwe-h,anjal
daemon:*:1:daemon
[ ... ]
sample:*:30:system,daemon

and later:

kris_at_oekoalpha /home/kris> id
uid=2200(kris) gid=220(tv1_2) groups=0(system),25(ftpadmin),252(kartlib),251(arcinfo),221(webmaster)

I am member of system, but not member of sample.

The one question still open:

> Also, I cannot come up why there should be a limit on the number of users
> per group. What is the limiting factor here?

Kristian
Received on Fri May 19 1995 - 12:34:21 NZST

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