[Linux-users] various group/netgroup/gid/NIS issues on the new linux machines

[Jon Hart]

Greetings,

Rather than bring this up in #crew, I figured I'd mention it here so
someone could figure out how it should get fixed and who will do it.

I something similar was mentioned at least once before, but apparently
this probably has popped up again.  There are a number of groups on the
debian boxes that have conflicting gids with other groups in CCS' NIS
domain.  When I say "other groups", I mean both UNIX groups and
netgroups. 

Of the 15 that clash, a few are a problem.  I won't show the relevant
lines from /etc/group and from ypcat because this is a publicly viewable
archived list, so feel free to run something similar to the following
command to see what groups are at fault:

 for group in `cat /etc/group | awk -F: '{print $3};'`; do
 	grep=`ypcat group | grep :$group:`
 	if [ $? = 0 ]; then
		echo && echo "CCS" $grep
		echo -n "Deb " && grep :$group: /etc/group
 	fi
 done

<snip a 10 line bit about how this is a security hole.  AUP!> 

The same problem exists with UNIX netgroups in the NIS domain.  I didn't
take the time to comb through the netgroups and see if any clash, but
one in particular did catch my eye.  If you are a member of the 'grads'
netgroup, you are a member of the gdm group on the linux machines.  This
was how I stumbled upon the initial problem when I found files laying
around with obvious CCS usernames as the owner but belonging to the gdm
group, which looked suspicious to me.

-jon