/etc/group system(0) gt 32k(to many users), breakdown group with name

[ScarFaceSenior]

1- I have this issue:"/etc/group system(0) gt 32k(to many users)"(2,172 users)
2- Need to breakdown group with new group name , keep same gid(0) and split users into it.

TIA,

 

[ScarFaceSenior]

I found this on the archives but it does nott show how to di it...

Try splitting the group into smaller groups with the same
gid but with a different name. For example,

orig_group:!:99:aaa,b,c,de,f,g,h,j,k,l,m,no,p
becomes


orig_group1:!:99:aaa,b,c,de,f
orig_group2:!:99:g,h,j,k,l

Hope this helps..

 

[usige]

ScarFaceSenior,
Ok, this might seem like a stupid question, but why would you need that many users in the system group? system would normally be a group with very few people in it. To be honest I wonder if you might just be better off evaluating if all those users need access to the system group and remove those that don't need it, but it's your system not mine.

As for how: I guess create a new group (say system1) and then you can use chgroup or chgrpmem to split the group with the help of perl or awk. It might just be as easy as creating the new group and doing:

chgroup -a id=0 system1

and then add all future users to the new group. I don't now if chgroup will allow you to set a group to an existing id, having never tried it.

You could of course always edit the file and spilt it by hand, but standard vi won't beable to handle a line that long.

 

[ScarFaceSenior]

You are correct usige, it is NOT a "a stupid question". I have just become the owner of this box and it is the first thing I have notice.

I will be evaluating this system, but for the moment the database does now allow so many users under one group. We have new hires to add. All of the database files are under this owner and group(man, what a task.)

Let me try your suggestion.

 

[usige]

I feel for you. It's always fun taking over a system that was setup as "anything to make it work." (a.k.a. too lazy to do it right)

One thing to consider if the above suggestion doesn't work is that some databases don't care about the GID and actually compare the group name. You run into the issue then where the user might have access at the system level to the files, but the database engine will not allow the update because the actual group name is not "system" but "system1". Hopefully you don't run into that issue, but something to be aware of.