group — user group file

Description

The /etc/group file is a text file that defines the groups on the system. There is one entry per line, with the following format:

group_name:password:GID:user_list

The fields are as follows:

group_name

the name of the group.

password

the (encrypted) group password. If this field is empty, no password is needed.

GID

the numeric group ID.

user_list

a list of the usernames that are members of this group, separated by commas.

Files

/etc/group

Bugs

As the 4.2BSD initgroups(3) man page says: no one seems to keep /etc/group up-to-date.

See Also

chgrp(1), gpasswd(1), groups(1), login(1), newgrp(1), sg(1), getgrent(3), getgrnam(3), gshadow(5), passwd(5), vigr(8)

Colophon

This page is part of release 5.04 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be found at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.

Referenced By

credentials(7), ext_unix_group_acl(8), fgetgrent(3), getgrent(3), getgrent_r(3), getgrnam(3), getgrouplist(3), gpasswd(1), groff_mdoc(7), group_member(3), grpck(8), gshadow(5), lslogins(1), mknetid(8), newgrp(1), nscd(8), passwd(5), postconf(1), putgrent(3), pwck(8), sg(1), sssd-files(5), vipw(8), winbindd(8).

2018-04-30 Linux Programmer's Manual