Shell scripting and changing group id

[Belinda Dermody]

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.

[Santosh Nair_1 · Accepted solution]

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

[James Beamish-White]

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

[Belinda Dermody]

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.

[Belinda Dermody]

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

[A. Clay Stephenson]

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

[Wodisch]

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

[James Beamish-White]

Sorry, didn't go down in typing:

./usr/bin/newgrp

. is what I meant, not ./

Sorry for the mistaking comunication.

Cheers,
James