topic Re: Shell scripting and changing group id in Operating System - HP-UX

Shell scripting and changing group id

Belinda Dermody — Thu, 18 Oct 2001 15:01:04 GMT

HP-UX 10.20. Is there a way you can change a user to a new group without starting up a new shell ( like newgrp command) within a script. I have a certain security group that writes files to to a directory owned by root and group is a/r the permission are 770 on the directory. People belong to different primary and a/r is secondary, but the system wont let them cd to the directory. I can do it with sudo commands, but I would rather not use it.

Re: Shell scripting and changing group id

Santosh Nair_1 — Thu, 18 Oct 2001 15:09:23 GMT

Have you tried setting up the /etc/logingroup file. This should fix the problem of the user not being able to cd into the directory. As long as they are a member of the group that owns the directory and the directory has execute permissions, the user should be able to cd in to the directory.

Just link /etc/group /etc/logingroup.

-Santosh

Re: Shell scripting and changing group id

James Beamish-White — Thu, 18 Oct 2001 15:13:15 GMT

I may be wrong, but have you tried

. /usr/bin/newgrp

? That '.' at the beginning means it won't fork a new process. Just an idea...

James

Re: Shell scripting and changing group id

Belinda Dermody — Thu, 18 Oct 2001 15:18:34 GMT

Thanks Santos, your response is correct and it solved my problems, it is amazing how long you work at a job and the new things that you learn each day. I read and searched, but didnt read deep enough.

Re: Shell scripting and changing group id

Belinda Dermody — Thu, 18 Oct 2001 15:21:03 GMT

James W. Your answer doesnt fit, the ./ is to look here first or to source a file.

Re: Shell scripting and changing group id

A. Clay Stephenson — Thu, 18 Oct 2001 15:22:36 GMT

Actually, if the users are members of both groups they should be able to do the cd without problem. I suspect the problem is permissions of the directories above OR the permissions of the mountpoint. If you examine all the mounted directories and everything is fine, umount the filesystems and examine the permissions of the mountpoint itself. Just to test this, I did exactly what you describe on a 10.20 box and it worked just as expected with directory permissions set to 770.

Clay

Re: Shell scripting and changing group id

Wodisch — Thu, 18 Oct 2001 15:43:44 GMT

Hello,

if you have a first line in your script like this:
#!/usr/bin/sh

then you could set the SGID (group-id bit) on the script, "chgrp" it to the wanted group, and give execute permission to everybody (an read and execute for that group, of course).

HTH,
Wodisch

Re: Shell scripting and changing group id

James Beamish-White — Fri, 19 Oct 2001 12:42:07 GMT

Sorry, didn't go down in typing:

./usr/bin/newgrp

. is what I meant, not ./

Sorry for the mistaking comunication.

Cheers,
James