explanation of user groups?

Ryzol · 03-21-2008, 04:09 PM

my /etc/group file lists these groups:

Quote:

bin, daemon, sys, adm, tty, disk, lp, mem, kmem, wheel, floppy, mail, news, uucp, man, audio, video, cdrom, games, slocate, utmp, smmsp, mysql, rpc, sshd, gdm, shadow, ftp, apache, messagebus, haldaemon, plugdev, power, pop, scanner, nobody, nogroup, users, console

Could someone explain what adding a non-root user to each of these groups would allow them to do? It's hard to google for this without getting a lot of LUG results.

jailbait · 03-21-2008, 04:26 PM

Being a member of a group allows you access to certain files that you could not otherwise access. You can use the find command to list what files group membership entitles you to. For example:

find / -group bin | less

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Steve Stites