[arch-general] New users not automatically added to 'users' group if -g default group specified?

[Leonid Isaev]

On Wed, 4 Dec 2013 17:10:45 -1000
Gaetan Bisson <bisson at archlinux.org> wrote:

> [2013-12-04 12:57:23 -0600] Leonid Isaev:
> > On Wed, 04 Dec 2013 09:16:46 -0600
> > "David C. Rankin" <drankinatty at suddenlinkmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > >   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.

> 
> > 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
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