Just a few things to make life with RedHat more pleasant...
This fault is particular to RedHat 8.0. There are several open bugs on bugzilla.redhat.com, but no "absolute" fix. The fault is thus:
Whenever the total members of one group (including the group name and group id ) exceed a certain number of characters on that group line in /etc/group, the group fails. This number seems to vary depending on type of members, position in the file, etc.
When the "magic number" is reached and a new user is added to that group, group functions no longer work. For instance, adding user "joebloggs" to group users at the "breaking point". Before you do this, all group related functions (groups, getent group, etc) work correctly, but after adding user "joebloggs":
[root@somebox etc?# groups joebloggs
id: cannot find name for group ID 100
All groups after that line in /etc/group will fail also.
The fix (unlikely as it seems) is to upgrade the glibc packages to those in RawHide?. Yes. Even though the major version changes... I was dubious about doing this at first, but all has gone well.
This fault nearly drove GreigMcGill insane. Many thanks to JohnMcPherson, 
PerryLorier, DanielLawson, and all the others on that stressful day on irc...
2 pages link to RedHatNotes:
