The newgrp command

[rengland at europa.com]

> Thank you Ben and Richard for yoru replies.
>
> Well, Ben you are right, root can switch to any group without having to
> give
> a password. I also discovered the same as what Richard said. However, in
> case an ordinary user is not a member of a particular group and she/he
> tries
> to use the newgrp command to switch to that group with correct password,
> it
> always gave the error message: Permission denied.
>
> Read a lot of docs on it but still could not help.
>
> Regards,
> Vidol
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Richard England" <rengland at europa.com>
> To: "For users of Fedora Core releases" <fedora-list at redhat.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2005 1:06 PM
> Subject: Re: The newgrp command
>
>
>>
>> Ben Stringer wrote:
>>
>> >On Tue, 2005-08-23 at 12:17 +0700, Vidol Loeung wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >>Dear All:
>> >>
>> >>The newgrp command seems simple to use. However, I could not use it or
>> I
> did
>> >>not know how to use it.
>> >>
>> >>Could someone please explain me what teh problem is? I was logged in
>> as
> an
>> >>ordinary user and type the command:
>> >>$ newgrp users
>> >>It asked me for the group password and I entered it but it said:
> "Permission
>> >>denied".
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> >Hi Vidol,
>> >
>> >You will need to be the root user to run this command.
>> >
>> >Try this:
>> >
>> >$ su -
>> ># newgrp users
>> >
>> >Cheers, Ben
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >>Regards,
>> >>Vidol
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> I don't believe that is strictly true.  If the userid is included in
>> several groups, all the user has to do is type in "newgrp <newgrpname>".
>> However, if the user is NOT member of the group, then they are prompted
>> for the group password.
>>
>> Use the command "id" to find out what your primary group currently is,
>> and the command "groups" to find out what groups your userid is
>> currently a member of.
>>
>> --R
>>
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I'm no expert on this but what password were you entering for the group?
Do you know what, if any password was assigned to the group?  It may or
may not be the same as you login passwd.

You can modify the group password using gpasswd  (see the man page).  I
did not investigate to find out how the original (creation time) password
is set.

I've only used a small number of groups  (3-4) on my personal machine and
I've added my userid to each so I've never had to use newgrp there.  At
work I don't have permissions to modify anything at this level so I've not
worked with it.

--R