-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 12/04/2013 09:10 PM, Gaetan Bisson wrote:

A while back, the default primary group for all new users was "users". It's not anymore: an individual group is created for each new user.

One can disable USERGROUPS_ENAB in login.defs to get the old behavior.

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This is done to save space in /etc/group on systems with large number of users. So each user gets a home directory, generates log info under /var/log upon login/logout, /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow grow linearly in the number of users, but we are going to shave a few bytes off /etc/group? That's hard to believe.

Gaetan, Thanks, glad to know I wasn't going nuts. I prefer individual groups created for each user and have a set of scripts that did that for Arch to keep my UID/GID for each user the same across multiple boxes. Eg. #!/bin/bash ## normal groups to add to system groupadd -g 1061 deborah groupadd -g 1062 zachry <snip> ## create users and assign groups useradd -u 1001 -g deborah -c "Full Name" -m deborah echo -e "\n Setting password for user deborah:" pwexit=1 while [[ $pwexit != 0 ]]; do passwd deborah pwexit=$? done unset pwexit useradd -u 1002 -g zachry -c "Full Name" -m zachry echo -e "\n Setting password for user zachry:" <snip> One question though, the USERGROUPS_ENAB flag seems self-explanatory, but the comments above the flag say: # # Enable setting of the umask group bits to be the same as owner bits # (examples: 022 -> 002, 077 -> 007) for non-root users, if the uid is # the same as gid, and username is the same as the primary group name. # # This also enables userdel to remove user groups if no members exist. # So, in addition to insuring umask group bits are the same as owner bits for non-root users, this setting controls whether new users are automatically added to the 'users' group by default with useradd? Because the behavior I saw from useradd prior to this change was that all users were added to the 'users' group even when a primary group was specified with -g. As long as nothing is using the 'users' group as a check like the cronie web-page seemed to suggest, then I guess there is no impact aside from saving a few bits in /etc/group. Thank you for the explanation. - -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.16 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iEYEARECAAYFAlKf/TgACgkQZMpuZ8CyrcgIxACeLwHfesXTVpDiXAJJNy5ASl9W jIEAnAtwl9tKw3DvSvymXYwVLeH2t7PP =QJr/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Wed, 4 Dec 2013 17:10:45 -1000 Gaetan Bisson wrote:

[2013-12-04 12:57:23 -0600] Leonid Isaev:

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On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 09:16:46 -0600 "David C. Rankin" wrote:

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In the past with arch installs, new users have always been added to the 'users' group. Now that is not being done.

In short, this is OK; your user doesn't need to be mentioned in /etc/groups after his primary group. If he is mentioned, then the primary group is also his supplementary one (which is anyway automatic).

A while back, the default primary group for all new users was "users". It's not anymore: an individual group is created for each new user.

One can disable USERGROUPS_ENAB in login.defs to get the old behavior.

That's right.

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This is done to save space in /etc/group on systems with large number of users.

So each user gets a home directory, generates log info under /var/log upon login/logout, /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow grow linearly in the number of users, but we are going to shave a few bytes off /etc/group? That's hard to believe.

I agree that this reasoning is a speculation, but still having 100 users in /etc/group after 'users' would a mess. Also, I remember the question of why 'users' contains no usernames has already been asked on this ML, but somehow I can't find the link... Best, -- Leonid Isaev GnuPG key: 0x164B5A6D Fingerprint: C0DF 20D0 C075 C3F1 E1BE 775A A7AE F6CB 164B 5A6D