Group File

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Solaris™ Operating Environment Boot Camp
By David Rhodes, Dominic Butler
Table of Contents
Chapter 3.  User Administration


This file is named /etc/group and is similar to the password and shadow files; in other words, it is an ASCII file consisting of colon-separated strings. It contains definitions for all the groups that are used on the system and, by default, looks like the one shown here:

 hydrogen# cat /etc/group root::0:root other::1: bin::2:root,bin,daemon sys::3:root,bin,sys,adm adm::4:root,adm,daemon uucp::5:root,uucp mail::6:root tty::7:root,tty,adm lp::8:root,lp,adm nuucp::9:root,nuucp staff::10: daemon::12:root,daemon sysadmin::14: nobody::60001: noaccess::60002: nogroup::65534: hydrogen# 

The field entries are as follows.

Field 1: Group Name

This is the actual group name.

Field 2: Group Password

This field is largely historical and now rarely used.

  • It can be empty.

  • It can contain an invalid encrypted password, such as an "*."

  • It can contain a valid encrypted password (13 characters).

Unfortunately, there isn't any way to get a password in here other than manually inserting an already encrypted password. The effects of this field vary depending upon whether you are a member of the group or not. Let's leave group passwords for now and revisit them in the following section, "Primary and Secondary Groups."

Field 3: Group Identity Number

Similar to the UID, the GID is used to store the numerical ID of a group. The value should be less than 60,000 for compatibility with other systems.

Field 4: Group User List

This contains a comma-separated list of users who are allowed to be in this group. It is used in conjunction with newgrp, which we'll look at in the following section.


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    Solaris Operating Environment Boot Camp
    Solaris Operating Environment Boot Camp
    ISBN: 0130342874
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2002
    Pages: 301

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