Re: changes to /etc/group ?
On Wed, May 21, 2003 at 10:36:48AM -0500, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On Mon, 2003-05-19 at 17:43, Dave Sherohman wrote:
> > On Tue, May 20, 2003 at 12:20:26AM +0100, Dave Selby wrote:
> > > When I change /etc/group is there a way of updating the system so the
> > > changes are acknowledged without re-booting?
> >
> > /etc/group is checked when the user logs in. To gain access to
> > newly-added groups, just log out and back in. No need to reboot.
>
> Yeah, but what a pain when you've got a bunch of different programs
> running in windows, multiple URLs loaded, etc, etc.
>
> There should be a way to dynamically refresh the "group cache".
Not possible because one process can't affect the privileges of another
process in Unix. The Hurd claims to be able to do this using a strange
hack with ports I think, although I'm not yet convinced of the security
of that approach; it changes a lot of basic assumptions.
You can use newgrp to start a new shell with an additional group.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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