Problem with gid

[Thorsten Kukuk]

Hello,

> A line like the following in /etc/groups:
> nogroup:x:4294967294:root
> leads to what seems to be an endless loop (endlessly reading
> /etc/groups) with e.g.:
> chown 14999.14999 some-file
> where 14999 is an unknown group.
> 
> /etc/nsswitch.conf has:
> group:     files
> 
> So, what's the correct solution:
> - tell Bernhard to use:
> nogroup:x:-2:root

Bad idea, since other Unix Vendors uses the other values, too. And if
we port the glibc to Solaris or HPUX, we couldn't tell the sysadmins
to change all of their group files. 

> - use strtoul instead of strtol - but this might lead to the same
>   problems, just the other way round.
> - fix the reading of gid

We need a fix in the parser, because other modules also use this
parser function.

  Thorsten

-- 
Thorsten Kukuk  kukuk@vt.uni-paderborn.de
                http://www-vt.uni-paderborn.de/~kukuk
Linux is like a Vorlon.  It is incredibly powerful, gives terse,
cryptic answers and has a lot of things going on in the background.