Why does netgroup resolutions stop If there is a member netgroup in the netgroup which is empty in Red Hat Enterprise Linux ?

Issue

• If there is a member netgroup in the netgroup which is empty, resolving netgroup stops at this group only. It ignores all group entries after that.

]# cat  /etc/netgroup
 test-users-all test-users-a test-users-b test-users-c (,userall,)
 test-users-a (,usera,)
 test-users-b
 test-users-c (,userc,)

]# getent -s files netgroup test-users-all
test-users-all         ( ,userall,) ( ,userc,)

• expected result:

test-users-all         ( ,userall,) ( ,userc,) (,usera,)

• Removing empty netgroup or keeping empty netgroup to the leftest on line results in proper resolving:

]# cat  /etc/netgroup
test-users-all test-users-b test-users-a test-users-c (,userall,)
test-users-a (,usera,)
test-users-c (,userc,)
test-users-b

]# getent -s files netgroup test-users-all
test-users-all         ( ,userall,) ( ,userc,) ( ,usera,)