[ic] For those that don't already know this...

[Jason Timm]

Hello all,

I just learned a lesson the hard way and wanted to share what I learned.

I have been setting up catalogs specifying the 'M' option for PermType
during the makecat process.  This means that each user will be in their own
group and Interchange files will be owned by the user with the group also
being the user's individual group.  This implies that the interchange user
(interch for me) must be in each user's group.

When you have a large number of catalogs, this seems like a logical way to
do things while maintaining a certain level of security so that users can't
alter other catalog owner's files.  But, there is a major flaw with that
system...

Most *nix versions including Red Hat 7.1 which I use, has a limit on the
number of groups that a user can belong to (usually 16, but 32 for some
flavors).  That means that after your 31st(ish) catalog, interch will no
longer have access to the user group owned files and will therefore disable
the catalog.  The tricky thing is that you can specify whatever you want in
the /etc/group file, but that doesn't mean that it will work.

Unless someone else has a solution for this, it appears that there is a
limit of 32 catalogs when using the 'M' PermType option.  And since this is
what makecat recommends, it really should be documented somewhere...

Jason