Community hub
Group (database)
View on Wikipedia | This article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject. (May 2013) |
Group is a name service database used to store group information on Unix-like operating systems. The sources for the group database (and hence the sources for groups on a system) are configured, like other name service databases, in nsswitch.conf.[citation needed] The database file is located at /etc/group. It contains fields representing the group name, group id, encrypted password, and users belonging to the group. These fields are stored in a structure defined in the header file <grp.h>.[1]
Seeing available groups on a Unix system
[edit]The contents of the group database (and available groups) can be seen with a variety of tools:
C
[edit]The <grp.h> header file contains the functions getgrgid and getgrname to look up a group by its ID or Name, as well as the functions setgrent, getgrent, and endgrent to iterate through all groups.[1]
Command line
[edit]The getent command can be used to fetch group information.[citation needed]
Fetching a list of all available groups
[edit]getent group
Fetching a specific group
[edit]For a specific group called 'users':
getent group users
Python
[edit]- grp - The Group Database — a Python module
References
[edit]- ^ a b Stevens, W. Richard; Rago, Stephen A. (2013). Advanced programming in the UNIX environment (third ed.). Upper Saddle River (NJ): Addison-Wesley. pp. 182–183. ISBN 978-0-321-63773-4.
 | This Unix-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |