group - add other groupnames to memberlist SL 9.3
 

SuSE Linux 9.3


passwd keeps the users user1, user2, user3 ... and their primary group,
for example usegroup = 200

Is it possible to put all the members of usegroup also into the group users = 100 by writing

users::100:usegroup, anotheruser1, anotheruser2, ...

or do I have to write

users::100:user1, user2, ..., anotheruser1, anotheruser2, ...

How many entries fit into a line of members? 1000?

Thanks

Max

The passwd file contains a list of all of the registered users and the number of each user's primary group. The secondary groups to which any user belongs is in the /etc/group file. This file is organized by having each user group mentioned once. The members of each group are listed on the line for each group name.

For example if you have a user named jim who is in the users group and in the disk group and the video group your files would look something like this.

passwd file:
jim:x:1001:100

group file:
bin:x:1
cdrom:x:20
daemon:x:2
disk:x:6:jim
ftp:x:49
users:x:100
video:x:33:jim

You can see that the passwd file only contains the group number of the primary group to which jim belongs. The group file contains an entry for jim at each group to which he belongs. Groups that have no members have no user names next to them. You may notice that the users group entry in the group file doesn't show any users. This MAY be due to the fact that members of the users group are listed in the passwd file.

Thank you, this is understood so far, but the question is:

can I put all members for instance form group disk to group video by putting group disk into group video:
disk:x:6: jimmy, van, mick
video:x:33:disk, paul, george, john, ringo

this means the group video has now members: jimmy, van, mick, paul, george, john, ringo

This makes it easier to handle a various number of groups and groups with larger numbers of members.

And how long can the line be for all the members in one group. Is it limited by the number of characters possible in one line? Max number of characters in line = 256
Approx length of name = 6 means max 40 members in one group

Cannot switch to LDAP at the moment yet.

Thank you