NAME

group − Group file

DESCRIPTION

The /etc/group database contains the following information for each group:

       •Group name

       •Encrypted password

       •Numerical group ID

       •A comma-separated list of all users allowed in the group

Note

Do not put any spaces between a comma and a username that follows; otherwise, the username following the comma will not be made a part of the desired group.

The /etc/group file is an ASCII file, with the fields separated by colons.  Each group is separated from the next by a new line.  If the password field is null, no password is demanded. 

Because of the encrypted passwords, it can and does have general read permission and can be used, for example, to map numerical group IDs to names. 

RESTRICTIONS

Increasing the number of groups that a user is in beyond 16 can affect services that use ONC RPC.  This version of ONC RPC supports up to 32 groups. This is for compatibility with ULTRIX V4.2 systems and beyond. Many OSF and ONC vendors can only support user membership of up to 16 groups. In addition, versions of ULTRIX earlier than V4.2, as well as some OSF vendors, support only 8 groups over ONC RPC. 

Users who increase their group membership beyond 8 or 16 groups will not be able to NFS mount file systems from servers that only support 8 or 16 groups over NFS. In addition, if root group membership is increased beyond 8 or 16, the NIS service will not work in a mixed NIS server environment where the servers only 8 or 16 groups. 

FILES

/etc/group

RELATED INFORMATION

Functions: setgroups(2), initgroups(3)

Commands: passwd(1), groups(1)

Files: passwd(4)