initgroups in nsswitch.conf

[Mark R Bannister]

Hi,

I submitted a large patch for the nsswitch.conf(5) man page recently to the Linux
man-pages project.  See:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.man/2366/match=nsswitch+conf

However, I omitted to mention initgroups, so I'd like to correct this omission.

Looking at the code in the latest glibc, it looks like the initgroups entry in
nsswitch.conf will be used by getgrouplist().  What I don't understand is why
it's needed?  Why would someone choose to use an initgroups entry instead of just
groups?  The files back-end for initgroups opens /etc/group, so what is it
actually doing for me?

Thanks,
Mark Bannister.