Defining groups

A user's account entry in /etc/passwd solely determines which group the user is part of on logging in, while the groups a user is named in within the /etc/group file solely determine the groups the user may switch to after logging in (see the newgrp utility). As with user names and IDs, the numeric effective group ID of a running program determines its access to resources.

For example, if you have a team of people that require access to /home/projects on the system, but you don't want the other users to have access to it, do the following:

1. Add a group called projects to the /etc/group file, adding all necessary users to that group (for details, see “Creating a new group,” below).
2. If you want this group to be the default for these users, change their account entries in /etc/passwd to reflect their new default group ID.
3. Recursively change the group ownership and permissions on /home/projects:

   chgrp -R projects /home/projects
   chmod -R g+rw /home/projects
     

4. Remove access for all other users:

   chmod -R o-rwx /home/projects
     

For more details on permissions, see “File ownership and permissions” in Working with Files.