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Date:      Mon, 02 Apr 2001 22:53:33 
From:      "Aaron Hill" <hillaa@hotmail.com>
To:        trond@ramstind.gtf.ol.no
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Is there an equivalent of newgrp in FreeBSD?
Message-ID:  <F41rhMOgRGkQ6mBySsx00002dc5@hotmail.com>

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>The command newgrp exists on SysV inspired systems such as RISC/os and Red 
>Hat GNU/Linux. Its purpose is to change the effective gid of the user 
>running the command. The user may choose only from the groups he/she is a 
>member of.
>
>What is the BSD equivalent, if any?


There is none that I know of. I've just come back from a week of Solaris 
training and on the course it was explained that Sys V only allow a user to 
be a member of one group at any one time, so the newgrp program was 
necessary to swap the user to another group when required. In BSD a user can 
be a member of several groups (maximum 32?) *concurrently* so there is no 
need for this type of program.

>BTW, is the use of the password field in the group file implemented in 
>FreeBSD, or other Unices for that matter?


Solaris uses this field. To get a password into the field you have to copy 
and paste it from /etc/shadow. The password is then used by the newgrp 
command. I don't know about FreeBSD but for the above explained reasons I 
don't see why this field would be needed... ?

Good Luck
Aaron Hill





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