>Number:         34664
>Category:       misc
>Synopsis:       group(5) man page misleading
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    misc-bug-people
>State:          open
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Fri Sep 29 16:00:00 +0000 2006
>Originator:     Andrew Smallshaw
>Release:        3.0
>Organization:
none
>Environment:
NetBSD foxhound 3.0 NetBSD 3.0 (FOXHOUND) #8: Wed Sep 6 13:33:27 BST 2006 andrews@foxhound:/sys/arch/i386/compile/FOXHOUND i386
>Description:
The group(5) man page states:

    The group file consists of newline separated ASCII records, one per
    group, containing four colon `:' separated fields.

This is incorrect since there may be multiple lines defining a group,
indeed this may be necessary for large groups - see PR#13974 for a
discussion of this.

Also there is no mention of the line length limitation discussed in the
above PR.  This should at least be mentioned unless the intention is to
modify the kernel to remove the 1024-character limit for that PR rather
than alter the user* utilities to reflect the limitation.

>How-To-Repeat:
Err... "man 5 group" maybe?
>Fix:
What follows is a diff to be applied to the group(5) man page:

*** original.group.5    Fri Sep 29 03:35:22 2006
--- group.5     Fri Sep 29 03:54:00 2006
***************
*** 79,85 ****
  .Nm
  file consists of newline separated
  .Tn ASCII
! records, one per group, containing four colon
  .Ql \&:
  separated fields.
  Each line has the form:
--- 79,85 ----
  .Nm
  file consists of newline separated
  .Tn ASCII
! records, usually one per group, containing four colon
  .Ql \&:
  separated fields.
  Each line has the form:
***************
*** 131,136 ****
--- 131,145 ----
  .Pa /etc/group
  file.
  .Pp
+ Very large groups can be accommodated over multiple lines of the file,
+ each with an identical format to that described above.  This can be
+ necessary to avoid the line length limitation (1024 characters) imposed
+ by the NetBSD kernel:
+ .Pp
+ big_grp:*:1000:user001,user002,user003 ... user099,user100
+ .br
+ big_grp:*:1000:user101,user102,user103 ... userxxx
+ .Pp
  The group with the name
  .Dq wheel
  has a special meaning to the
***************
*** 244,246 ****
--- 253,259 ----
  command does not change the
  .Nm group
  passwords.
+ .Pp
+ The kernel imposes a length limit of 1024 characters on any line in the
+ .Nm group
+ file.