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From:	"Mark A. Ziesemer" <mark_z AT charter DOT net>
Subject:	Re: "id -Gn" w/ username doesn't return all associated groups. Issue with getgrent()?
Date:	Tue, 23 Jan 2007 01:11:31 +0000 (UTC)
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Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin <at> cygwin.com> writes:
> > Since Cygwin already lets the underlying OS take care of much of the
> > security (handling passwords, etc.), can't Cygwin just ask Windows for the
> > user's groups when needed, to?
> 
> How?  Consider that getgrent just enumerates /etc/group.  It doesn't
> know for what purpose the calling application does it.  I don't think it
> makes a lot of sense to call a OS function for each getgrent call to
> fill out the gr_mem field on the fly.
> 
> Having said that, I don't intend to change this behaviour myself.
> However, I'm certainly not averse to patches to Cygwin which add this
> behaviour, as long as it's not getting too slow by this.
> 
> Corinna
> 
> P.S.: How did the subject disappear?!?

No clue about the subject - I'm using Gmane to reply, since I'm usually
without reliable SMTP access.

If group membership IS currently required to be listed in /etc/group for
these functions (groups, id, getugroups(), getgrent(), etc...), shouldn't
mkgroup -ul, with the "-u", be run by default at Cygwin first-run?  Also,
including this better in the documentation would be a plus.

Also, "mkgroup -u" has a bug, as far as I'm concerned.  It always includes the
Windows' username, even if renamed in /etc/passwd for Cygwin-purposes.  For
example, take a Windows username of "John Smith".  I renamed the first field
in /etc/passwd to "jsmith" to avoid the space.  "jsmith" should (and needs) to
be included in the gr_mem field, not "John Smith", otherwise all of the above
functions fail to see that this user is a member of any groups...

I do see one issue with implementing the OS-group-calls into Cygwin - 
Win95/98 don't have any concept of user groups.  This would have to be
accounted for...  Maybe I'll convert the
http://http://cygwin-getugroups.pbwiki.com/ site to address the
possibility of adding this functionality...

Thanks for the replies!


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