Limitation on number of /etc/group memberships?

[Doug Eastick]

dupuy at cs.columbia.edu writes:

>> RPC error: Invalid authentication
>> /home/user-id: not owner

>This is a bug in Sun NFS support in 4.0.  Under SunOS 3.x and 4.2 BSD, the
>group limit was 8.  SunOS 4.0 and 4.3 BSD raise the group limit to 16, but
>the NFS protocol had only 8 slots for group membership information when
>using Unix authentication.

SunOS4.0.3c wants each user to be in 8 groups or less, for the above case;
and each line in /etc/group must have less than about 30 members (~2.5
screen lines in our case) or else portmapper won't startup at boottime. I
don't know why, but we fixed it by using multi-line group entries. Eg:

	staff:joe,john,frank,harry
	staff:mary,betty,guido

With one big-long-line, portmapper won't start and any NFS mounts will
give you RPC: program not registered errors.

Doug Eastick	eastick at me.UTORONTO.BITNET	UUCP: ...!utai!me!eastick
		eastick at me.utoronto.ca