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Date:      Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:50:10 +1030
From:      Ian Moore <no-spam@swiftdsl.com.au>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Cc:        "Michael P. Soulier" <msoulier@digitaltorque.ca>, Jon Falconer <jfalconer@puc.edu>
Subject:   Re: Changing maximum number of groups in FBSD - is it feasible?
Message-ID:  <200512081650.16894.no-spam@swiftdsl.com.au>
In-Reply-To: <200512071741.57495.no-spam@swiftdsl.com.au>
References:  <200512071741.57495.no-spam@swiftdsl.com.au>

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On Wednesday 07 December 2005 17:41, Ian Moore wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm toying with the idea of increasing the maximum number of groups a user
> can belong to on one of my servers - we have a rather complex organisation
> and we're hitting the 15 group limit for some people.
>
> There seems to be differing opinions on how to do this and if it's actual=
ly
>
> feasible. One post I found said:
> > in src/sys/sys/syslimits.h there is a constant named 'NGROUPS_MAX'.
> > change it to however many you need (within reason), rebuild/install wor=
ld
> > and kernel.
>
> Another said you have to change all sorts of things in the source, modify=
 a
> kernel parameter, rebuild world and rebuild any port that uses NGROUPS -
> which probably means a portupgrade -fa.
>
> There is talk of a maxgroups() parameter in the kernel, but NOTES makes no
> mention of this.
>
> I wonder too if some apps would need their own configuration altered to
> allow them to work with the higher limit.
>
> So I just wanted to ask if anyone has successfully raised the NGROUPS_MAX
> limit, especially when running samba & nfs on the system?
>
> If not, I'll work around the problem a different way.
>
> (BTW I'm running 5.4-RELEASE)
>
> Cheers,
> Ian,
>=20
> Since you are running FreeBSD 5.x, have you considered using ACLs? See the
> handbook section 14.12.
>=20
> Have you considered cascading groups? That's the normal workaround on
> Enterprise Unix systems like HP-UX and Solaris.
>=20
> Instead of putting everyong in "group", do this instead.
>=20
> group:*:100:group1,group2
> group1:*:101:user1,user2
> group2:*:102:user3, user4
>=20
> Thus, the users are all transitively in group, and you work around the=20
limit.
>=20
> Mike

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I had considered ACLs as one possible=20
workaround and I'd said to a mate of mine "gee, it'd be really good if you=
=20
could make a group a member of another group", not thinking you actually=20
could do that! That's very handy.

Since there doesn't seem to be anyone so far that's saying they have=20
successfully increased the group limit, it looks like I'll be using one of=
=20
those workarounds....

Cheers,
=2D-=20
Ian
gpg key: http://home.swiftdsl.com.au/~imoore/no-spam.asc

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