group(4CC)

NAME | DESCRIPTION | FILES | ATTRIBUTES | SEE ALSO

NAME

group- format of the group permissions file

DESCRIPTION

The </etc/group> file consists of ASCII records describing groups. Each record is on a separate line, and contains four fileds that are separated by colons (:)

These fields are as follows:

group

Name of the group.

passwd

Group's encrypted password.

gid

The group's decimal ID.

member

Group members.

Lines whose first non-whitespace character is a hash-sign (#) are comments, and are ignored. Blank lines that consist only of spaces, tabs or newlines are also ignored.

The group field contains the group name used for granting file access to users who are members of the group. The gid field contains 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 contains 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.

YP/NIS INTERACTION

The /etc/group file can be configured to enable the YP/NIS group database. An entry whose name field consists of a plus sign (+) followed by a group name, will be replaced internally to the C library with the YP/NIS group entry for the named group. An entry whose name field consists of a single plus sign with no group name following, will be replaced with the entire YP/NIS group.byname map.

If the YP/NIS group database is enabled for any reason, all reverse lookups (by getgrgid.3ext) will use the entire database, even if only a few groups are enabled. Thus, the group name returned by getgrgid.3ext is not guaranteed to have a valid forward mappingIf the YP/NIS group database is enabled for any reason, all reverse lookups will use the entire database, even if only a few groups are enabled.

FILES

/etc/group

ATTRIBUTES

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE	ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Interface Stability	Evolving

SEE ALSO

passwd(1M), crypt(3STDC), getgrent(3STDC), yppasswd(1M)

ChorusOS 5.0  Last Revised December 2001

NAME | DESCRIPTION | FILES | ATTRIBUTES | SEE ALSO