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Re: "activating" changes to /etc/group



On Fri, Mar 30, 2001 at 12:21:15AM -0500, Barry Mathieu wrote:
> Try issuing the command, 'update-passwd' as root.  Seems to work for me
> for updating group status without logging-in & out.

thats really interesting since update-passwd has absolutely nothing
whatsoever to do with the group membership a particular user has in a
login session:

man update-passwd

DESCRIPTION
       update-passwd handles updates of /etc/passwd,  /etc/shadow
       /etc/group  on  running  Debian  systems.  It compares the
       current  files  to  master  copies,  distributed  in   the
       base-passwd package, and updates all entries in the global
       system range (that is, 0-99).


it is impossible in unix to add a new group to the list of groups of
an existing process, you MUST kill that process or else have a
privileged process spawn a new shell with the new group.
update-passwd will not do this.  newgrp however will it is setuid
root.  man newgrp.  

-- 
Ethan Benson
http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/

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