Bug 145494

Summary: Membership in too many groups prevents login ("getgroups: Invalid argument")
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Kenneth Porter <shiva>
Component: opensshAssignee: Tomas Mraz <tmraz>
Status: CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE QA Contact: Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 2   
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Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2005-01-31 21:19:28 UTC Type: ---
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Description Kenneth Porter 2005-01-18 22:25:06 UTC 
I edited /etc/group to add myself to another group, raising my total
to 33, and I was no longer able to log in. /var/log/secure reported
"fatal: getgroups: Invalid argument". Some googling revealed the
source of the problem, that getgroups returns EINVAL when the number
of groups exceeds a kernel limit (NGROUPS_MAX in
/usr/include/linux/limits.h).

I'm not sure what the best fix is, but one shouldn't be locked out of
logging in when another group is added to one's list. sshd should fail
in a more graceful way, for example allowing the login but without all
supplmentary groups available, and a warning issued to the login
terminal and the syslog.

See also bug 145492.
Comment 1 Tomas Mraz 2005-01-31 21:19:28 UTC 
It seems to be working fine in FC3.