Re: Switching groups with newgrp - how to get the new group with |GetTokenInformation()| ?

[Corinna Vinschen <corinna-cygwin@cygwin.com>]

On Mar  5 23:38, Dan Shelton via Cygwin wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Feb 2024 at 14:11, Corinna Vinschen via Cygwin
> <cygwin@cygwin.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Feb 23 22:15, Dan Shelton via Cygwin wrote:
> > > HOWEVER, there is another Cygwin bug:
> > > "getent group mywingrp1" does not list any group members, even after
> > > "net localgroup mywingrp1 mywinuser44 /add", which is a POSIX
> > > violation.
> >
> > Not a bug.  Two problems:
> >
> > - Getting members of a group can be an extremly costly operation
> >   in a domain or, worse, a domain forest, or even worse, if the
> >   domain or domain forest is remote.
> >
> > - Alonmg the same lines, getting members of a group can be extremly
> >   costly in big orgs with thousands of users.  Nobody want's to clutter
> >   up space with the list of members in the "Domain Users" group.
> >
> > - Permissions to enumerate members of a group are restricted.
> >   By default only admins and group members are allow to enumerate
> >   members and this can be restricted further by domain admins.
> >
> > Therefore we dropped even trying to populate gr_mem, considering
> > that even in its original form on Unix systems, it's used only
> > to add supplementary groups.  To do this right on Windows is even
> > more costly than blindly enumerating.
> >
> > It's not a bug, it's a feature :)
> 
> Could you add an option to getent so that the full lookup can be
> requested via command line, pls?

That's not possible.  getent just calls getpwent/getgrent.

> Always editing /etc/nsswitch.conf
> forth and back is not a elegant solution, aside from race conditions
> with other users on a system

So, here we go again.

- What exactly are you trying to accomplish by enumerating the accounts?
  Maybe you won't actually need it for your task at hand.

- Why do you have to change nsswitch.conf "back and forth"?
  Just change it once and you're done.


Corinna