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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 $
34 .\" $DragonFly: src/share/man/man5/group.5,v 1.5 2006/05/26 19:39:40 swildner Exp $
36 .Dd September 29, 1994
41 .Nd format of the group permissions file
45 consists of newline separated
47 records, one per group, containing four colon
50 These fields are as follows:
51 .Bl -tag -width password -offset indent -compact
59 The group's decimal ID.
64 Lines whose first non-whitespace character is a pound-sign (#)
65 are comments, and are ignored.
66 Blank lines that consist
67 only of spaces, tabs or newlines are also ignored.
71 field is the group name used for granting file access to users
72 who are members of the group.
75 field is the number associated with the group name.
76 They should both be unique across the system (and often
77 across a group of systems) since they control file access.
84 This field is rarely used
85 and an asterisk is normally placed in it rather than leaving it blank.
88 field contains the names of users granted the privileges of
90 The member names are separated by commas without spaces or newlines.
91 A user is automatically in a group if that group was specified
94 entry and does not need to be added to that group in the
97 .\" When the system reads the file
99 .\" the fields are read into the structure
103 .\" .Bd -literal -offset indent
105 .\" char *gr_name; /* group name */
106 .\" char *gr_passwd; /* group password */
107 .\" int gr_gid; /* group id */
108 .\" char **gr_mem; /* group members */
111 .Sh YP/NIS INTERACTION
114 file can be configured to enable the YP/NIS group database.
117 field consists of a plus sign (`+') followed by a group name, will be
118 replaced internally to the C library with the YP/NIS group entry for the
119 named group. An entry whose
121 field consists of a single plus sign with no group name following,
122 will be replaced with the entire YP/NIS
126 If the YP/NIS group database is enabled for any reason, all reverse
129 will use the entire database, even if only a few groups are enabled.
130 Thus, the group name returned by
132 is not guaranteed to have a valid forward mapping.
134 There are various limitations which are explained in
135 the function where they occur; see section
138 In older implementations,
139 a group cannot have more than 200 members.
140 The maximum line length of
143 Longer lines will be skipped.
144 This limitation disappeared in
146 Older binaries that are statically linked, depend on old
149 binaries in compatibility mode
150 may still have this limits.
152 .Bl -tag -width /etc/group -compact
166 file format appeared in
168 The YP/NIS functionality is modeled after
170 and first appeared in
172 Support for comments first appeared in
177 command does not change the