/etc/bash.bashrc invokes groups command which is slow in large environments

[Sam Morris]

/etc/bash.bashrc runs groups(1) whenever a new shell is started.

This command calls getgrgid(3) on every group of which the user is a member.

In an environment where FreeIPA is used to allow users to log into their computers using their Active Directory accounts, I have seen each call to getgrid(3) take over ten seconds. My Active Directory user is a member of 30 groups and it is not uncommon for users to be a member of 50 or more groups. This results in enormous delays when logging in to a system with SSH, launching a terminal emulator or even creating a new tab in an existing terminal emulator.

The code from /etc/bash.bashrc wants to find out whether the user is a member of the 'sudo' or 'admin' groups in order to display a hint to the user.

# sudo hint
if [ ! -e "$HOME/.sudo_as_admin_successful" ] && [ ! -e "$HOME/.hushlogin" ] ; then
    case " $(groups) " in *\ admin\ *|*\ sudo\ *)
    if [ -x /usr/bin/sudo ]; then
 cat <<-EOF
 To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
 See "man sudo_root" for details.

 EOF
    fi
    esac
fi

This can be rewritten to avoid calling getgrgid(3) for every group that the user is a member of by doing something like this (untested):

# sudo hint
if [[ -x /usr/bin/sudo ]]; then
    if [[ ! -e $HOME/.sudo_as_admin_successful && ! -e $HOME/.hushlogin ]]; then
        sudo_gid=$(getent group sudo | cut -d: -f3)
        admin_gid=$(getent group admin | cut -d: -f3)
        for gid in $(id -G); do
            if [[ $gid -eq $sudo_gid || $gid -eq $admin_gid ]]; then
                cat <<-EOF
                    To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
                    See "man sudo_root" for details.
                EOF
                break
            fi
        done
    fi
fi

As an aside: the reason that getgrid(3) is so slow is because it must fetch the members of each group. There is no quick way to do this in Active Directory: a recursive search for group members must be performed, followed by a lookups to retrieve each of their their POSIX UIDs, and then more lookup to retrieve their POSIX username.

Even when the 'ignore_group_members' sssd(8) option is enabled, which causes getgrid(3) to report that a group has no members, calling getgrid(3) on 30-40 groups still takes a few seconds. And this option is not the default.

It's also not uncommon to have groups with spaces in their names, which causes groups(1) to produce ambiguous output.

For these reasons it is best to avoid the use of groups(1) in scripts where more performant and robust alternatives are available.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.