Date: 22 Nov 2002 10:32:54 -0800 From: swear@attbi.com (Gary W. Swearingen) To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: passwords in /etc/group Message-ID: <5d1y5da209.y5d@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <20021121212019.GA47022@raggedclown.net> References: <000701c29193$0f4a68f0$0a2da8c0@sem> <20021121212019.GA47022@raggedclown.net>
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> What purpose do they serve ? > A System Manager can put the users in the appropriate groups > for their work. > I have never seen them used on any Unix system I have worked on, > and I seem to recall from some ancient documentation that they > are more trouble than they are worth. (Please put blank lines between paragraphs or use bullets or indentation or something. This isn't a Poetry 101 forum. Thanks.) IRIX and Linux (and HP-UX?) had a "newgrp" command for changing your current GID (eg, "gid" from "id -g"). I've forgotten, but I suppose "newgrp" used the group passwords if they were defined. Users could change their GID to work in different projects. I'm not sure why FreeBSD doesn't have the feature, but I suppose someone thought that the SUIDDIR feature was sufficient. But I don't know what it would hurt to have the feature which needn't be used or could easily be disabled. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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