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32 .\" From: @(#)group.5 8.3 (Berkeley) 4/19/94
33 .\" $FreeBSD: src/share/man/man5/group.5,v 1.15.2.4 2002/02/01 15:51:18 ru 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
49 These fields are as follows:
50 .Bl -tag -width password -offset indent -compact
58 The group's decimal ID.
63 Lines whose first non-whitespace character is a pound-sign (#)
64 are comments, and are ignored.
65 Blank lines that consist
66 only of spaces, tabs or newlines are also ignored.
70 field is the group name used for granting file access to users
71 who are members of the group.
74 field is the number associated with the group name.
75 They should both be unique across the system (and often
76 across a group of systems) since they control file access.
83 This field is rarely used
84 and an asterisk is normally placed in it rather than leaving it blank.
87 field contains the names of users granted the privileges of
89 The member names are separated by commas without spaces or newlines.
90 A user is automatically in a group if that group was specified
93 entry and does not need to be added to that group in the
96 .\" When the system reads the file
98 .\" the fields are read into the structure
102 .\" .Bd -literal -offset indent
104 .\" char *gr_name; /* group name */
105 .\" char *gr_passwd; /* group password */
106 .\" int gr_gid; /* group id */
107 .\" char **gr_mem; /* group members */
110 .Sh YP/NIS INTERACTION
113 file can be configured to enable the YP/NIS group database.
116 field consists of a plus sign (`+') followed by a group name, will be
117 replaced internally to the C library with the YP/NIS group entry for the
118 named group. An entry whose
120 field consists of a single plus sign with no group name following,
121 will be replaced with the entire YP/NIS
125 If the YP/NIS group database is enabled for any reason, all reverse
128 will use the entire database, even if only a few groups are enabled.
129 Thus, the group name returned by
131 is not guaranteed to have a valid forward mapping.
133 There are various limitations which are explained in
134 the function where they occur; see section
137 In older implementations,
138 a group cannot have more than 200 members.
139 The maximum line length of
142 Longer lines will be skipped.
143 This limitation disappeared in
145 Older binaries that are statically linked, depend on old
148 binaries in compatibility mode
149 may still have this limits.
151 .Bl -tag -width /etc/group -compact
165 command does not change the
171 file format appeared in
173 The YP/NIS functionality is modeled after
175 and first appeared in
177 Support for comments first appeared in