RE: netgroup limits on -current ... [mountd(8)]

Not a good option in our environment as some of the Red Hat Linux
operating systems do not support recursive netgroups (apparently rightly
so as this is not in the RFC).

The ideal solution would be for FreeBSD to support as many hosts in a
netgroup as current Solaris systems do.

-----Original Message-----
From: Vladimir Egorin [mailto:vladimir_at_math.uic.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, 22 February 2006 12:50 AM
To: freebsd-current_at_freebsd.org; Thyer, Matthew
Subject: Re: netgroup limits on -current ... [mountd(8)]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2006 at 12:24:35PM +1030, Wilkinson, Alex wrote:
	> OS: FreeBSD 7.0-CURRENT #24: Thu Feb 16 12:28:58 CST 2006
	> 
	> Hi all,
	> 
	> We are currently experiencing problems with FreeBSD -CURRENT
and mountd(8).
	> When we export a filesystem via NFS to a netgroup with a
'large' number of hosts
	> in it we get all sorts of truncation. There looks like a limit
on the number of
	> hosts in a netgroup FreeBSD's mountd(8) can export to. e.g.
	> 
	> NFS Export
	> ----------
	> 
	> /export/home/username my_netgroup
	> 
	> mountd(8) In Debugging Mode
	> ---------------------------
	> 
	> Feb 21 12:10:49 host mountd[83451]: can't get address info for
host hostname.dsto.defence.g
	> Feb 21 12:10:49 host mountd[83451]: bad host
host.dsto.defence.g in netgroup my_netgroup, skipping
	> 
	> This happens as mountd(8) builds its exports list via:
	> 
	> mountd: getting export list
	> mountd: got line /export/home/username my_netgroup
	> mountd: making new ep fs=0x4297314f,0x57f85ac
	> got host host.dsto.defence.gov.au
	> got host host.dsto.defence.gov.au
	> got host host.dsto.defence.gov.au
	> got host host.dsto.defence.gov.au
	> got host host.dsto.defence.gov.au
	> got host host.dsto.defence.gov.au
	> got host host.dsto.defence.gov.au
	> got host host.dsto.defence.gov.au
	> got host host.dsto.defence.gov.au
	> got host host.dsto.defence.gov.au
	> got host host.dsto.defence.gov.au
	> got host host.dsto.defence.gov.au
	> got host host.dsto.defence.gov.au
	> 
	> ...

[snip]
 
	> Can someone please tell me if there is a limit on the number
characters or hosts
	> that mountd(8) can build an export list from ? And if so can
we increase it ?
	> 
	> Cheers
	> 
	>  - aW

This reminds me of an old problem I had on a solaris 2.5.1 -- it was not
possible
to have a "large" number of hosts in the netgroup and (thus) in the
export list.
The solution was to split the large netgroup into a number of smaller
netgroups,
and then combine them into a large netgroup using the smaller netgroups'
names.
We did that with a C program, you could also do that in a script.

The problem was a limit of 255 characters on the length of the 
netgroup list.

I still have the program if you are interested.

-- 
Vladimir