Linux and Networking

Linux and Networking

3.15 The /etc/group file

The group file contains all the information of group membership, and optionally items such as group password (usually stored in gshadow on current systems), this file must be readable by everybody for the system to work properly. Its format is:

 

groupname:encrypted_password:GID:member1,member2,member3

 

A group may contain no members (eg, it is not used), only one member or multiple members, and the password is optional (and rarely used).

Each line of the file represents a single record made up of by the fields (each string separated by a colon “:”) that represent the group information.

 

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