From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Apr 2 15:53:36 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from hotmail.com (f41.law6.hotmail.com [216.32.241.41]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C083837B71A for ; Mon, 2 Apr 2001 15:53:33 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from hillaa@hotmail.com) Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Mon, 2 Apr 2001 15:53:33 -0700 Received: from 165.228.130.11 by lw6fd.law6.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Mon, 02 Apr 2001 22:53:33 GMT X-Originating-IP: [165.228.130.11] From: "Aaron Hill" To: trond@ramstind.gtf.ol.no Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Is there an equivalent of newgrp in FreeBSD? Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2001 22:53:33 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed Message-ID: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 02 Apr 2001 22:53:33.0598 (UTC) FILETIME=[BE8A13E0:01C0BBC7] Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG >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 _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message