SUMMARY: NIS netgroup error message

From: jtcummi@sandia.gov
Date: Sun Jul 18 1993 - 02:15:31 CDT


>
> I can't find this error message in the manuals. I am doing a NIS make and
> get the following error message;
>
> Cycle detected in /etc/netgroup: .
> Cycle detected in /etc/netgroup: .
> updated netgroup
>
> I can see no problems in my /var/etc/`domainname`/netgroup file, and
> gethosts works fine.
>
> Jeff Cummings, Sandia National Laboratories, (505)-844-2094, jtcummi@sandia.gov
>
>
Fix was to replace all spaces with tabs & make sure all null lines are really
empty per instructions from;

Christian.Hnilica@alcatel.co.at
-------------------------------
I saw the same error message a few months ago - solutions:

+ Do NOT use spaces in the netgroup file as separators, use tabs ONLY

+ There is an (undocumented) limit for the number of entries in one netgroup
  (i think it's 36 entries or some (unknown) number of bytes :-)
  If you have that large netgroups, split them into smaller pieces, and then
  create one netgroup with the small pieces as members

dennett@Kodak.COM
-----------------
I had the same problem a week or two ago. There was what appeared to
be a blank line in my netgroups file that wasn't really blank. It had
a single tab in it. Check the netgroups file for this or perhaps a
blank line with one or more spaces in it.

hello@cs.utwente.nl
-------------------
There is (was) a silly bug concerning a combination of blank lines and
comment lines in the netgroup source file. You can either delete all
your blank lines in the file, or edit the Makefile to strip them out
before giving the source to makedbm.

pauline@uniq.com.au
-------------------
Hmm, the error comes from /usr/etc/yp/revnetgroup, which is undocumented. 8-(
Are you sure the error isn't caused by something similar to an alias loop?

I can duplicate the error quite easily by running revnetgroup on the following
example.

basil:/tmp (27) Yes Dear? cat foonetgroup
foogroup (foohost,,) (wibblehost,,) foogroup
basil:/tmp (28) Yes Dear? /usr/etc/yp/revnetgroup < foonetgroup -h > foo.out
Cycle detected in /etc/netgroup: foogroup.

Hope this helps,

barmar@think.com
----------------
This comes from revnetgroup. It means that you have a netgroup that
includes itself. Since you're getting two error messages, it's probably a
cycle of two netgroups that refer to each other (but it could also be two
self-referential netgroups).

The error message is supposed to contain the name of the bad netgroup
before the colon. Could there have been a control character there that was
lost during the netnews transfer, or perhaps from cut-and-paste from your
window? Try running the make with errors redirected to a file, and then
view it with an editor that shows all control characters.

Thanks to all who answered;
rodney@cssc-syd.tansu.com.au
mueller@darmstadt.gmd.de
dylan@teesside.ac.uk
shandelm@jpmorgan.com
emcgon@ca.dcu.ie
springer@hau.eri.com
poffen@sj.ate.slb.com
lemke@MITL.Research.Panasonic.COM
oliver@ast.saic.com



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