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From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Long /etc/group
Message-ID: <1991Mar6.224924.20641@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 6 Mar 91 22:49:24 GMT
References: <26192@adm.brl.mil>
Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 22

In article <26192@adm.brl.mil>, wolf@grasp1.univ-lyon1.fr (Christophe Wolfhugel) writes:
|> So my question: is there any limit for the system in the length of a
|> /etc/group entry? Is yes, how long, and how could I solve this? Create
|> a second entry for the same group? or... ?

  Well, the code I'm looking at right now uses a buffer of length BUFSIZ to
hold each line in the /etc/group file.  So yes, there is a limit on most
systems, and it's probably going to be 512 or 1024 characters.

  The 4.3reno code also appears to have a limit -- 1024 characters.  It
explicily discards anything after that many characters on a line (the older
routines simply assume that everything is less than the maximum line length,
so they get very confused when a line is too long).

  I don't know of any way to solve this, other than not having groups with
that many people in them :-).

-- 
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