newgrp command

durus123 · 05-02-2012, 04:08 PM

Hi

In RHEL5, is there a way to change my effective gid?

In Solaris, I changed my effective gid with the newgrp command:
newgrp <gid>

On RHEL5, the newgrp command prompts me for a password.

[cathy@foo ~]$ groups
wheel webadm
[cathy@foo ~]$ newgrp webadm
Password:

It doesn't accept my password, and there is no password set on the group. I'd prefer a way to change my effective gid without having to enter a password.

Thanks.

Regards,

Cathy Smith

Kustom42 · 05-02-2012, 04:47 PM

Modify the /etc/group file. Add the additional users as a comma seperated format after the last colon of the file. In the future you can specify which groups a user should belong to with the 'useradd' command and the -G option.

Code:

NAME
       group - user group file

DESCRIPTION
       /etc/group  is  an ASCII file which defines the groups to which users belong.  There is one entry per line, and each line
       has the format:

              group_name:passwd:GID:user_list

       The field descriptions are:

       group_name
              the name of the group.

       password
              the (encrypted) group password.  If this field is empty, no password is needed.

       GID    the numerical group ID.

       user_list
              all the group memberâs user names, separated by commas.

---------- Post added 05-02-12 at 02:48 PM ----------

Also, the /etc/password file has the primary GID of the user assigned there. So if you want to change their primary group you will need to modify that to the numerical GID of the group. The first post will let you add supplementary groups to your user.