In FreeBSD, a group is a list of users. It makes it easier to define the permissions such as read, write, and execute for a system resource that is to be shared among the users of that group. You can set permission to ensure that files are accessible to users of a particular group like accounts, hr, marketing, etc.
Kernel Identifies a user by its UID and group by its GID. The group name to GID mapping is given in /etc/group file. A superuser can modify it by using a text editor. Alternatively, pw can be used to add and modify a group in FreeBSD.
How to list the groups in a terminal
The list of the groups with their group id is given in the /etc/group file. To display the list of groups in your terminal use the following command –
less /etc/group
How to add a group in FreeBSD
To add a group in FreeBSD we will use pw utility. The pw can be used to add, remove, modify, and display the users and groups. It has various command-line options that you can use in shell scripts.
Now to add a group use the following command –
pw groupadd group_name
For example –
pw groupadd management
A group with the name management will be added to the system.
You can check the newly added group by using –
pw groupshow management
How to add a user to a group
By using pw we can add a user to a group. Now if you use pw groupshow command you will find that there are no members are added in the newly created group. Use the following command to add a user to a group –
pw groupmod group_name -M user_name
For example –
pw groupmod management -M lalit
The option -M will add a user to an empty group or it will replace the existing user of a group.
Use the following command to see the members of a group –
pw groupshow management
As you can see in the image above user lalit is now a member of the management group.
How to add multiple users in a group
To add multiple users to a group you will have to use the option -m with the given command. Now to add another user named vaibhav to the management group run the following command in your terminal-
pw groupmod management -m vaibhav
If you run the following command you will see that the multiple users are added to the group-
pw groupshow management
If you want to know more about the uses of pw then see its manual page by running following command in your terminal –
man pw
Ok, that’s all for now, I discussed removing a user from a group in FreeBSD in another article. If you have anything to say on this topic then you can write to us in the comments below.