[rhn-users] Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS release 3 (Taroon Update 2) and tunable NGROUPS_MAX

[John C. Koen]

We are running RH Enterprise AS v3, with kernel: 2.4.21-15.ELsmp.  The problem
we are encountering is that this kernel has a limit of 16 for NGROUPS_MAX, and 
we have FTP users who are members of more than 16 groups.

For these members, the first 16 groups that they are a member of, work fine.  Any
group after the first 16, will not work unless they use the 'newgrp' command.  I need
for all 16+ groups to work, all of the time, without the use of 'newgrp'.

Sometime during the early generations of the 2.6 kernel, /proc/sys/kernel/ngroups_max
was created and given a value of 65536, tunable with sysctl.  This fixes my issue, however,
up2date does not show me a path to get from 2.4 to 2.6.

I have not seen any updates to RHASv3, to include the 2.6 kernel, nor do I know
of a workaround at this time.

How can I allow for any of my FTP users to be a working member of more than 16
groups at a single time?  I either need a patch for 2.4, or a RH Enterprise
level approval for the 2.6 kernel

--johnk

John C. Koen
Systems & Network Administrator
Southwestern University, Georgetown, TX
johnk at southwestern.edu || TEL:512.863.1586 || FAX:512.863.1605