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Re: fun w/ /etc/group and friends



On Sun, May 05, 2002 at 05:45:47PM -0700, Mike Pfleger wrote:
> Today's questions are all about group, group-, and /etc/group.org, those
> fun little files that live in /etc.  I checked the archives, but came up
> with nothing useful.
> 
> First question:  Why are there three of these files?  I thought there
> should only be /etc/group. (?)

The other two are backups, created by various tools that edit
/etc/group. I forget exactly what at the moment.

(.org stands for "original", I think.)

> The next question is a bit more involved, perhaps:
> Can we nest groups in Debian or in GNU/Linux in general?
> -My guess would be "yes" but my experimentation is pretty much
> indicating "no".

No, sorry. This isn't possible in any variant of Unix to my knowledge.

> I logged out and back in, btw, which should have forced the change (or
> am I mistaken?).

That would be sufficient if the change worked. ;) You can also use
newgrp(1) to affect only the current shell.

> My config currently has this user account explicitly added to audio
> and dip (and what is that group for, btw?)

The dip group controls access to dial-up PPP accounts.

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]


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