LSF must not ignore empty groups if they are managed by egroup

When running `badmin reconfig`, LSB ignores lines with empty groups:

Aug 25 16:22:20 2025 11385 4 10.1 do_Groups: File /opt/lsf/conf/lsbatch/XXXX/configdir/lsb.users at line 50: No valid member in group <XXXX>; ignoring line

this is ok for groups which are managed within LSF (in `lsb.users`), but is not ok for externally managed groups (`egroup`). Externally managed groups may include groups in Active Directory or LDAP. They may have no members at one time, but have members later, depending on the external account management. This happens completely outside the control of LSF and thus LSF must not ignore such groups, in case they are by chance empty in the moment of reconfiguration. Instead, such groups should always be considered, as providing a list of members is automatically handled by `egroup` and the configured update interval (lsb.params: EGROUP_UPDATE_INTERVAL).

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Bill McMillan

Sep 15, 2025

This has been the design behaviour for 20+ years. I'm not saying it is right or wrong, but it has been the way that it has worked. egroup data is essentially passed through the same validation routines as if it were reading from the file directly, so empty groups are skipped.

As mentioned in the support ticket, adding say "lsfadmin" to all groups would ensure they aren't empty.

I don't understand you comment "results in higher license costs, this is at some point also a financial problem". Can you elaborate?

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LSF must not ignore empty groups if they are managed by egroup