Re: [K12OSN] Adding user to a group

["Terrell Prude', Jr." <microman cmosnetworks com>]

Shawn Powers wrote:

> Arg...
>
> Ok, in my previous Debian life (I've adopted Redhat, all due to you 
> folks...) it was very simple to add a user to a group.
>
> adduser spowers audio
>
> for example would add me to the audio group, so I could listen music 
> whilst I typed away during the day.  It is different in Redhat, and 
> while I see *sorta* how I can do it -- there are a few caveats.
>
> usermod spowers -G audio
>
> Will do it, but I believe that gets rid of ALL my other secondary 
> groups, and then I only belong to the "spowers" group, and the "audio" 
> group.
>
> How do I just ADD myself to a group, without snarfing up previous 
> group membership?
>
> BTW, the audio example isn't really the reason I'm asking -- it goes 
> along with my other password generating question.  I need to restrict 
> the students in usermin so they can't change passwords, and the 
> easiest way is to disable a group from using that feature, so I need 
> to add them all to a common group.
>
> Thanks AGAIN for any help,
> -Shawn


Here's how.

  microman multimedia01:~$ su root
  Password:
  root multimedia01:/home/microman# vi /etc/group

Note that you can use any editor of your choice for this (kedit, gedit, 
even OpenOffice.org if you remember to save in text format :-) ).  Once 
inside, find your group name and have at it, like so:

  root::0:root
  bin::1:root,bin,daemon
  mygroup::200:microman,macrogirl,gandalf,mrspock,MyNewUser

You see that I've added MyNewUser to mygroup, above, and that the 
userIDs are separated by commas.  Save, and presto, you're done.  Yep, 
it really is that easy, and it works on all GNU/Linux distributions, be 
they Red Hat, Debian, Slackware, SuSE, whatever.  Works on Solaris, 
HP-UX, and the BSDs, too!  You might need to log out and log back in for 
it to take full effect.

Beats the heck out of a registry, don't it?  :-)

--TP
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