gshadow(5) — Linux manual page

GSHADOW(5)           File Formats and Configuration           GSHADOW(5)

NAME

       gshadow - shadowed group file

DESCRIPTION

       /etc/gshadow contains the shadowed information for group
       accounts.

       This file must not be readable by regular users if password
       security is to be maintained.

       Each line of this file contains the following colon-separated
       fields:

       group name
           It must be a valid group name, which exist on the system.

       encrypted password
           Refer to crypt(3) for details on how this string is
           interpreted.

           If the password field contains some string that is not a
           valid result of crypt(3), for instance ! or *, users will not
           be able to use a unix password to access the group (but group
           members do not need the password).

           The password is used when a user who is not a member of the
           group wants to gain the permissions of this group (see
           newgrp(1)).

           This field may be empty, in which case only the group members
           can gain the group permissions.

           A password field which starts with an exclamation mark means
           that the password is locked. The remaining characters on the
           line represent the password field before the password was
           locked.

           This password supersedes any password specified in
           /etc/group.

       administrators
           It must be a comma-separated list of user names.

           Administrators can change the password or the members of the
           group.

           Administrators also have the same permissions as the members
           (see below).

       members
           It must be a comma-separated list of user names.

           Members can access the group without being prompted for a
           password.

           You should use the same list of users as in /etc/group.

FILES

       /etc/group
           Group account information.

       /etc/gshadow
           Secure group account information.

SEE ALSO

       gpasswd(5), group(5), grpck(8), grpconv(8), newgrp(1).

COLOPHON

       This page is part of the shadow-utils (utilities for managing
       accounts and shadow password files) project.  Information about
       the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩.  If you have a bug
       report for this manual page, send it to
       pkg-shadow-devel@alioth-lists.debian.net.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩ on 2024-06-15.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2024-06-13.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

shadow-utils 4.14.0            06/15/2024                     GSHADOW(5)

Pages that refer to this page: gpasswd(1), newgrp(1), sg(1), group(5), grpck(8), vipw(8)

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