[cobalt-developers] Site Admins > about 50 - ftp problems

[Brian Foy Jr <cio@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I think I found a problem and worked out an idea for a fix.
I hope everyone is listening...shoot your ideas my way:

Cobalt's' claims of 250 Virtual sites is not false....it's just half true in
practical terms.

250 "virtual domains", yes, if you think of them as just that...the virtual site
added to your list.
Pointing to other sites or otherwise just sitting there.

The problem comes along when I try adding an admin to each of the virtual sites.

This part is prob not new to many of you but, Linux (RedHat in this case) stores
groups in '/etc/group'.
When anyone adds a site admin it stores an entry in this file under 'site-adm:'
so we end up with an entry
looking like:

site-adm:x:111:admin,useramin1,useramin2,useramin3,useramin4,useramin5,etc...,etc...,etc...

At about 50 admins, averaging a name length of 10-12 characters, Linux must
reach some kind
of maximum string length for this line. Doing so results in what I and at least
one other user on here have
been experiencing. FTP Logins require a longer then normal authentication and
even when eventually
authenticated, the users are only authorized as if they were a normal user. aka
no access to the site
directory just there own personal /web directory. Not only that but run 'free'
during a login and you will
see that your maxing your memory. I even got a segmentation error loging in
once...(see my earlier posts).

The solution?

I'm a single admin with control over all sites (no other users on the box). For
me all I have to do is have
Admin be the only user listed on the 'site-adm:' list and then just create
multiple '/etc/group' files in which
Admin belongs to say... sites 1-36, then next file Admin belongs to the next 36
sites...so on and so forth.
The procedure then becomes: When I want to update a site I login...run a shell
script that replaces
'/etc/groups' with the corresponding '/etc/group' file and wala... Admin has
access to upload to the site
I need. And no FTP auth problems.

Info? Ideas? Other Solutions?

If you have an easier way to 'fix' this problem let me know!
Maybe there is a way to alias groups so that multi groups have the same
permission?
I don't want to have to do all this...it just looks to be the only solution
right now.

Brian Foy Jr.
CIO - eWebPlace.com, Inc.
cio@xxxxxxxxxxxxx