Re: default group ownership of a file

[Michael Schurter <michael@synthesyssolutions.com>]

ChadDavis wrote:
> Hello.  I need to know how the group ownership of a file is decided in 
> debian.  Also, is it the same for all linux systems? 

All Linux (and probably Unix) filesystems store a group ID number (gid) 
on a per-file basis.  The gid is looked up in /etc/group to get the 
textual group name you're used to seeing.

All users have a primary group membership as well as any number of 
secondary group memberships.  (use the /usr/bin/id command to get that 
info)  When a user creates a file, that file's group owner is set to the 
users primary group.

You can change the group ownership of a file with the /usr/bin/chown or 
/usr/bin/chgrp commands.  You can change the group membership of a user 
with the /usr/sbin/usermod command.

Michael Schurter