Well..

I'm pulling together a bunch of J's postings. He's been complaining about not being able to add users - this thread,

Please Help I've lost my Gui : http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=47212

My gdm.conf file is stuffed :
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=47156

And urm.. I'm sure there was another one somewhere - which all appear to be related.

J's been adding group entries for every user he creates - for the purposes of allowing um.. 'group' access to home directories or something. A spectacularly bad idea, and I had done some research on the maximum amount of groups possible under a default Linux install.

I came up with the number 32 and had written a whole heap of stuff on the limit, why it was a bad idea to do 'per user groups' in the first place, and possible workarounds.
While fiddling on a machine here, out of curiosity I did a count on the number of groups on *my* machine, and came up with 41. Which... completely invalidated the stuff I had researched.

So.. I deleted my post and figured I needed more information.

I've not gotten it though (I'm at work, and um.. working :P) so I'll post what I *have* and maybe someone else can figure out why I'm seeing results which conflict.


I figure that he's over-done his group file and that it's working on a first-in-first-out basis and his gdm group has been shoved off the list, and therefore he's having rights problems when trying to run his Gui.

I would suggest backing up your group file, hacking it down to the basics again (below say 50 groups), and see if that helps.

Here's wot I wrote earlier, but bear in mind, I can't make it tally with my experience in the field :

-----------------------------------------------------------
You have a limit of 32 groups, by default.

While it doesn't address Linux specifically you may want to look at this :

http://web.gnu.walfield.org/mail-arc...gust/0020.html

What may not help is the information that the number of groups is hard coded into the kernel. You're welcome to recompile your kernel and up the number of groups. You will want to look in : /usr/include/asm/param.h

and change the line :

#define NGROUPS 32

Also in /usr/include/linux/limits.h
and change :

#define NGROUPS_MAX 32 /* supplemental group IDs are available */

and then recompile your kernel. Recompiling is not trivial, and you'll probably break something.

Further reading (with quotes from Linus of all people) can be found below on why it happens this way :

http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/lin...07.3/1007.html

Slick.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Notes : The above infers there's a limit of 32 groups. Which is bourne out by my inspection of the header files there. But I get 41 working groups out of a pretty default install of Redhat 7.3.. So, I dunno.

I shall further the above comment by questioning the motive behind the addition of the groups in in the first place.

I'm not sure if it's in this thread or another, but *why* are you using groups to control access to home directories instead of the *user*?

Slick.

my bad slick, i realize now what i should have done. i am going to delete all of the groups that i created and try to fix it from there.

am new to this linux stuff. when it created it by default it really screwed me up.

i took all of the users out i created. now i have less then 32 groups. problem is still here.

is there something else i might have to do?

i have been trying everything to fix this. and keep getting the same problems

do i have to compile the kernel again?

No.. no compiling needed - I'm really not certain on that anyway.

But... You should have a line in your group file which reads something like :

gdm:x:42:

>when it created it by default it really screwed me up.

If you have large numbers of users to group together figure out a group relating to function, and use :

useradd <user> -g <main group> -G <group>,<group>,<group>

-g initial_group
The group name or number of the user's initial login group. The group name must exist. A group number must refer to an already existing group. The default group number is 1.

-G group,[...]
A list of supplementary groups which the user is also a member of. Each group is separated from the next by a comma, with no intervening whitespace. The groups are subject to the same restrictions as the group given with the -g option. The default is for the user to belong only to the initial group.


Slick.

now check this out

i start the machine, get the same error, log in with the command prompt, i type startx, the gnome desktop starts up, but the error keeps popping up on my machine.

in the group file i have gdm:X:42:

this is very weird

Um.. what error is that exactly?

the error i keep getting is:

the gdm group does not exist. fix the configuration file and restart the gdm daemon.

I'm rapidly running out of ideas...

I did catch this though :

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome.../msg00105.html

Which says :

And you need to make sure both the gdm user and the
gdm group exist on the system.

D'you still have your gdm user?

Slick.

yes the gdm user still exits. i have a feeling i am going to have to reload the operating system again.

i really dont know what else to do. i have tried everything.

I am a total noob to linux, but I am aware of case-sensitivity issues, and I noticed there that your 'X' is UPPERCASE, whereas in my /etc/group all 'x's are lowercase.
Maybe it was just a typo tho'