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Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 15:17:22 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu>
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Reply-To: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu>
To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: Files with nonexistent groups
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On Fri, 10 Apr 1998, Brett Glass wrote:

> Was just browsing the file system of a server that had been upgraded
> from 2.1.1-RELEASE to 2.2.2-RELEASE, in preparation for upgrading
> it AGAIN to 2.2.6. As I did so, I noticed that some of the device
> nodes in /dev belonged to group #86, which didn't have a name or exist
> in /etc/groups. I also noticed that some files created by the
> Qualcomm POP daemon belonged to group #6, which also had no
> name.
> 
> What are these groups? Do they have standard names? And why do
> the files and device nodes belong to them?

Files are really owned by UID number and GID number. A file which is
created on someone elses system may have a "lingering" UID, GID from
that system depending on how the files migrated to your system.

If the UID/GID is not in your '/etc/group' or '/etc/password' then the
'ls' command will report the UID/GID _number_ as user or group owner. 
This may be utter nonsense on your system. 

To fix it just do a 'chown' on the files.

That GID 6 is missing is odd though. GID 6 is the mail group, which is a
group that is installed by default. This should be in your '/etc/group'

>From my group file
mail:*:6:

Have fun,	 | Stop warning me about the latest virus. Learn more...
Jason Wells	 | http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html


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