[SUMMARY] NFS/RPC supporting more than 16 groups

From: David W. Blaine (blained@kostabi.gdls.com)
Date: Thu Jul 30 1998 - 07:50:17 CDT


SUMMARY:
I guess the 16 group membership limit is set in stone to prevent
interoperability problems with other vendor's NFS implementations :-(. See
Casper Dik's response below. Also see Joel Lee's response for determining
individual kernel parameter values (man getconf to see all the different
variables you can query). My original post is provided at the very bottom.

Thanks,

------------------
David Blaine (blained@gdls.com)
Computer Systems Engineer
CSC for GDLS
Phone: 810-825-7650

RESPONSES:
--------------------
From: Casper Dik <casper@holland.Sun.COM>

They couldn't because that would break interoperability with other systems.

Even having root in more than *8* groups gave some problems with other
NFS servers.

Casper
---------------------
From: Joel Lee <joellee@continuus.com>
# uname -a
SunOS reality 5.6 Generic_105181-05 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-60
# getconf NGROUPS_MAX
16

-- Joel Lee

(Opinions expressed here is just mine and no one else, not even my employer.)

Continuus Software Corp.
joellee@continuus.com
jlee31415@yahoo.com
http://www.continuus.com
--------------------

ORIGINAL POST:

>I have a mixed environment of Sun boxes ranging from SunOS 4.x up to Solaris
>2.6. We are in the process of evaluating Solaris 2.6 for general distribution
to
>upgrade everyone. We also have a long standing problem. We have users who
belong
>to more than 16 groups. I know there is a kernel parameter NGROUPS_MAX which
can
>be used to up the default (Is the default 16 or 32?) but I read that NFS breaks
>if this number is above 16 (specifically during RPC authentication). I'm
>wondering, since Solaris 2.6 incorporated many NFS improvements, maybe (just
>maybe) this problem is no more?! Does anyone have any comments?

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