Maybe a problem with using NIS?

[Georg Zitzlsberger]

Hi!

Today I have discovered something strange with NIS and glibc on Debian
3.0!

I have done the following on my client which is connected to a
NIS-Server:
/etc/netgroup:
rzusers (,,rz) # rz is the NIS-domain

/etc/passwd:
address@hidden::0:0:::/bin/bash

/etc/shadow:
address@hidden::::::::

/etc/group:
cdrom:x:24:@rzusers

Here I would expect, that every user in the NIS is a member of "cdrom".
Theoretically - should this work?
I have experimented with that and found something, which is confusing:

Lets assume the following as an example:

"passwd" on the NIS-Server:
...
user1:something:1000:20::/home/user1:/bin/bash
user2:something:1001:20::/home/user2:/bin/bash
user3:something:1002:20::/home/user3:/bin/bash
user4:something:1003:20::/home/user4:/bin/bash
foo:something:1004:30::/home/foo:/bin/zsh
...

"group" on the NIS-Server:
...
users:x:20:foo
...

Now I downloaded the glibc-2.3.2 sources. In the directory
"glibc-2.3.2/grp/" there is a testprogram "testgrp.c" to output the
users of the group the current user is part of. If a user of the group
"users" then runs that program on the client only "foo" is printed.

Here my question:
Is glibc only searching the "group" file via NIS for getting the users
of a certain group? Shouldn't the "password" file be traversed over NIS
too?

I hope I have described the problematic correctly, because it is very
difficult to explain. If you should have further questions, just drop me
a mail.

Thanks,

Georg Zitzlsberger