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GROUP(5) FreeBSD File Formats Manual GROUP(5) NAME group - format of the group permissions file DESCRIPTION The file </etc/group> consists of newline separated ASCII records, one per group, containing four colon `:' separated fields. These fields are as follows: group Name of the group. passwd Group's encrypted password. gid The group's decimal ID. member Group members. The group field is the group name used for granting file access to users who are members of the group. The gid field is the number associated with the group name. They should both be unique across the system (and often across a group of systems) since they control file access. The passwd field is an optional encrypted password. This field is rarely used and an asterisk is normally placed in it rather than leaving it blank. The member field contains the names of users granted the priviledges of group. The member names are separated by commas with out spaces or newlines. A user is automatically in a group if that group was specified in their /etc/passwd entry and does not need to be added to that group in the /etc/group file. FILES /etc/group SEE ALSO setgroups(2), initgroups(3), crypt(3), passwd(1), passwd(5) BUGS The passwd(1) command does not change the group passwords. HISTORY A group file format appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX. FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p8 April 29, 1991 FreeBSD 14.1-RELEASE-p8