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Re: Things I Don't Understand About Debian



on 17:25 Thu 24 Feb, Sjoerd Hardeman (sjoerd@lorentz.leidenuniv.nl) wrote:
> Dr. Ed Morbius schreef:
> >on 16:24 Wed 23 Feb, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. (bss@iguanasuicide.net) wrote:
> >>On Wednesday 23 February 2011 15:11:25 Carlos Mennens wrote:
> >
> >>>3. Debian installer defaults to creating user group names which is just a
> >>>mess.
> >>Actually, I prefer user group names.  I'm not sure I have a
> >>really strong argument for them.  What facts support your
> >>assertion that they are "just a mess".
> >
> >The most compelling argument I could think of would be that NFS *still*
> >only allows a maximum of (IIRC) 16 groups IDs to be associated with a
> >given user.
> >
> >I said "most compelling".  I didn't say compelling.  IMO this is a
> >severe deficiency of NFS (of which it's not particularly lacking
> >otherwise).

> Since when does nfs keep track of the groups a user belongs to? So
> how can nfs have a limit on the number of groups that a user can
> belong to?

Network FILE System.

File attributes:  owner, group, world permissions.

Do the math.


NFS (through version 4) transmits the user's EUID and EGID, as well as
associated groups for any file access operation.  The protocol allows
only 16 groups to be transmitted.  Note that NFS/NIS (the two protocols
are generally used together) effectively define a flat name-group space
across the storage network.

My current (reasonably vanilla) Debian user has 12 groups assigned.  Add
another 1-2 NFS/NIS domain groups and I'd be getting real close to the
NFS limit.

Note that NFS doesn't limit how many groups you can belong to on the
local machine.  It /does/ restrict how many groups can be defined on any
given NFS mount.  My previous suggestion of reordering groups such that
NFS-specific groups appear earlier in the list seems to work fairly
reasonably for most purposes.

-- 
Dr. Ed Morbius, Chief Scientist /            |
  Robot Wrangler / Staff Psychologist        | When you seek unlimited power
Krell Power Systems Unlimited                |                  Go to Krell!

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