[Novalug] Linux System Groups Limit??

Kevin Dwyer kevin@pheared.net
Mon Jan 7 01:00:13 EST 2008


I can't find a limit on the length of the user list for groups in
/etc/group.  It's easy to believe that there is no  (theoretic) limit
though, since the majority of operations in Linux lookup which groups a user
is in, as opposed to which users are in a group.  So while the lookup will
get linearly slower as you increase the size of groups in /etc/group, it
won't take more memory to handle it so it should be fine.  If you think of
the more absurd case of hundreds of thousands of users, you'd probably want
to use something with a more intelligent lookup (LDAP might have it, not
sure), but 500 users should be just fine.

Aside: I was interested to find that the limit for groups a process can be
in is 33 (32 supplementary groups, 1 primary group, if my man page reading
is correct).  I want to know the situation that demands that many groups.
;-)

-kpd

On 1/3/08, Jean Figarella <jeanfiga@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Is there a limit as to the maximum number of users that can be added to a
> Linux system group?
>
>
> For example, can I add 500 users to the "users" group in Linux?
>
>
> Thanks,
> Jean
>
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