Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!hybrid!scifi!bywater!uunet!uswnvg!dv
From: dv@uswnvg.UUCP (Dan Volkman)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Another possible kernel enhancement...
Keywords: chgrp, group, permission
Message-ID: <654@uswnvg.UUCP>
Date: 22 Feb 91 15:02:55 GMT
Organization: US West NewVector, Bellevue, Wash.
Lines: 20

Being a system administrator on a large 5.3.X unix production shop, I am
continually confronted with situations that demand a change in an
individuals group status.  Someone on group "a" that mostly uses
applications belonging to that group has a need to occasionly use
group "b"s applications.  Most of these users are in a captured
menu type environment and the concept of shells and processes are
foreign to them so the att command "newgrp" is not a possible solution.
We created a sgid program "asgroup" to solve this problem but I
feel that once the permission has been granted with an entry in /etc/group,
this kind of activity should be handled seemlessly by the kernel.
I know that BSD did such a modification but I do not see this feature
in the 5.4 documentation.  With the "newgrp" command, a user can
function under group "a" or "newgrp b" then function under group "b"
but he can not function in both group "a" and "b" even though
that permission has been granted.  As a side note, we also discovered
that if a group definition line in /etc/group exceeds BUFSIZ serious
obstacles appear.  It appears that the "getgr..." functions do not
allow a continuation character (I think they are using "fgets".).

dv@uswnvg


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