System Administration Guide, Volume I

Fields in the Group File

The fields in the group file are separated by colons and contain the following information:

group-name:group-password:gid:user-list

For example:

bin::2:root,bin,daemon

Table 1-8 describes the group file fields.

Table 1-8 Fields in the group File


Field Name	Description
`group-name`	Contains the name assigned to the group. For example, members of the chemistry department in a university may be called `chem`. Group names can have a maximum of nine characters.
`group-password`	Usually contains an asterisk or is empty. The group-password field is a relic of earlier versions of UNIX. If a group has a password, the `newgrp` command prompts users to enter it. However, there is no utility to set the password.
`gid`	Contains the group's GID number. It must be unique on the local system, and should be unique across the entire organization. Each GID number must be a whole number between 0 and 60002. Numbers under 100 are reserved for system default group accounts. User defined groups can range from 100 to 60000. (60001 and 60002 are reserved and assigned to `nobody` and `noaccess`, respectively.)
`user-list`	Contains a list of comma-separated list of user names, representing the user's secondary group memberships. Each user can belong to a maximum of 16 secondary groups.

UNIX User Groups

By default, all Solaris 7 systems have these groups:

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: