entry in /etc/group too long - problem using sudo with %group

UNIX Solaris
1

hi folks,
I've been googling for quite some time, but still can't find anything near it...my problem is the following:
for useradministration in our company we are using ssh/sudo, now whenever I try to add users (we have quite a number of users) with useradd -G groupname for secondary group I can only get up to 512 bytes in a line for a group entry, or in other words the secondary group can only hold up to 512 characters, which is not really enough for the amount of users we are using. the problem is also, that sudo relies in our landscape on %group entries for different secondary groups, but since the secondary groups can't hold enogh users, not all the users who normally should can run sudo!
did anyone come across this problem before?
how do you manage the user authentification with a large number of users using sudo?
thanks a lot!
poli

2

Edit /etc/group by hand. On SunOS 5.8, I have one line in /etc/group that is 1346 characters.

3

hi perderabo,
thanks a lot! we are using this workaround currently but I am not quite sure, whether solaris 8 is facing some internal limitations with it so that we might end up with a screwed up system. I opened a case with SUN, but no answer yet.
have you had any problems with the long line yet?
thanks!
poli

4

It works fine.

5

hi perderabo,
yeah, I just got the statement from SUN, that it's actually ok to edit /etc/group and add more users to a line. the system limit is 16 kByte which should be enough :slight_smile:
thanks again!
poli