Group file

[David Valentino_1]

We created a group called "payroll." We added about 6 users to this group. For one specific user, the group changes back to "users" and we don't know why. We have to keep changing it back to payroll. Any information on this would be appreciated. Thank you.

[Ann Majeske]

What do you mean "the group changes back to "users""? How are you checking the group?

What is the user's primary group in the /etc/passwd file?

Ann

[David Valentino_1]

In the /etc/passwd file, the user's group is payroll(guid 226). When we look in /u07/users and do an ls -l, the particular user's group is listed as payroll. What we noticed, when we did an ls -l, her group was users. We changed it back to payroll. This happened 3 times. Also, the first 2 times, she was missing from the /etc/group - payroll. We had to add her back in.

[Ann Majeske]

Doing an ls -l shows the owner and group of the files and/or directories, not the user itself. There's nothing in the OS that will mysteriously change the owner and/or group of files and/or directories and edit the group file to remove a user from a group without someone running a utility (e.g. usermod) to modify the files and/or directories.

Some of the possibilities here are: 1) someone with root permissions is changing things behind your back; 2) Perhaps someone is trying to create a new user with the same UID and that's causing the problems; or 3) there's a bug in some utility you're using causing it to make changes that you don't expect (e.g. modifying the wrong user).

Are you running any tools on the system other than those supplied with the OS (e.g. Advanced Server)? Does anyone else have root access to the system?

Ann

[Michael Schulte zur Sur]

David,

when the user was created what was it's group. Has the group been edited since and how? Do you use a hashed password table or C2 security?

greetings,

Michael

[Ralf Puchner]

how have you changed the group? By editing or by the specific setup tools?

[Roberto Polli]

Hi,
associations between group name and gid are made not only through /etc/passwd but using NIS/LDAP too.

Do you use NIS/LDAP?
Which entries do you have in /etc/nsswitch.conf

Remember to logout/login before uid/gid changing be effective
Peace, R.