NAME
group —
format of the group permissions
file
DESCRIPTION
The file ⟨/etc/group⟩ consists of newline separated ASCII records, one per group, containing four colon ‘:’ separated fields. These fields are
as follows:
- group
- Name of the group.
- passwd
- Group's encrypted password.
- gid
- The group's decimal ID.
- member
- Group members.
The group field is the group name used for granting file access to users who are members of the group. The gid field is the number associated with the group name. They should both be unique across the system (and often across a group of systems) since they control file access. The passwd field is an optional encrypted password. This field is rarely used and an asterisk is normally placed in it rather than leaving it blank. The member field contains the names of users granted the privileges of group. The member names are separated by commas without spaces or newlines. A user is automatically in a group if that group was specified in their /etc/passwd entry and does not need to be added to that group in the /etc/group file.
FILES
- /etc/group
SEE ALSO
BUGS
The
passwd(1) command does not change the group
passwords.
HISTORY
A group file format appeared in
Version 6 AT&T UNIX.