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32 .\" From: @(#)group.5 8.3 (Berkeley) 4/19/94
33 .\" $Id: group.5,v 1.12 1997/03/12 14:05:28 mpp Exp $
35 .Dd September 29, 1994
40 .Nd format of the group permissions file
44 consists of newline separated
46 records, one per group, containing four colon
48 separated fields. These fields are as follows:
49 .Bl -tag -width password -offset indent -compact
57 The group's decimal ID.
62 Lines whose first non-whitespace character is a pound-sign (#)
63 are comments, and are ignored. Blank lines that consist
64 only of spaces, tabs or newlines are also ignored.
68 field is the group name used for granting file access to users
69 who are members of the group.
72 field is the number associated with the group name.
73 They should both be unique across the system (and often
74 across a group of systems) since they control file access.
81 This field is rarely used
82 and an asterisk is normally placed in it rather than leaving it blank.
85 field contains the names of users granted the privileges of
87 The member names are separated by commas without spaces or newlines.
88 A user is automatically in a group if that group was specified
91 entry and does not need to be added to that group in the
94 .\" When the system reads the file
96 .\" the fields are read into the structure
100 .\" .Bd -literal -offset indent
102 .\" char *gr_name; /* group name */
103 .\" char *gr_passwd; /* group password */
104 .\" int gr_gid; /* group id */
105 .\" char **gr_mem; /* group members */
108 .Sh YP/NIS INTERACTION
111 file can be configured to enable the YP/NIS group database.
114 field consists of a plus sign (`+') followed by a group name, will be
115 replaced internally to the C library with the YP/NIS group entry for the
116 named group. An entry whose
118 field consists of a single plus sign with no group name following,
119 will be replaced with the entire YP/NIS
123 If the YP/NIS group database is enabled for any reason, all reverse
126 will use the entire database, even if only a few groups are enabled.
127 Thus, the group name returned by
129 is not guaranteed to have a valid forward mapping.
131 There are various limitations which are explained in
132 the function where they occur; see section
135 In older implementations,
136 a group cannot have more than 200 members. The maximum line length of
138 is 1024 characters. Longer lines will be skipped.
139 This limitation disappeared in
141 Older binaries that are statically linked, depend on old
142 shared libraries, or non-FreeBSD binaries in compatibility mode
143 may still have this limits.
145 .Bl -tag -width /etc/group -compact
159 command does not change the
165 file format appeared in
167 The YP/NIS functionality is modeled after
169 and first appeared in
172 Support for comments first appeared in