LinuxGuide.it > Linux Man Page: "groupadd"

 
 
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The Linux Documentation Project maintains an archive of snaphots of the (English language) core Linux manual pages that are maintained by Michael Kerrisk. Corrections and additions are welcome, but review the "Help Wanted" list, first.

Man pages belonging to programs are usually distributed together with those programs. Therefore, the core Linux man-pages mainly contains the pages for system calls and library routines, special devices, and file formats. However, it also contains documentation for a few programs, in cases where the authors or maintainers of the program do not distribute man pages themselves.

This page is part of release 3.11 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages

 
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Name

groupadd - create a new group

Synopsis

groupadd [-g gid [-o]] [-r] [-f] [-K KEY=VALUE] group

Description

The groupadd command creates a new group account using the values specified on the command line and the default values from the system. The new group will be entered into the system files as needed.

Options

The options which apply to the groupadd command are:

-f This option causes to just exit with success status if the specified
group already exists. With -g, if specified GID already exists, other (unique) GID is chosen (i.e. -g is turned off).

-r This flag instructs groupadd to add a system account.
The first available gid lower than 499 will be automatically selected unless the -g option is also given on the command line. This is an option added by Red Hat.

-g GID
The numerical value of the group’s ID. This value must be unique, unless the -o option is used. The value must be non-negative. The default is to use the smallest ID value greater than 500 and greater than every other group. Values between 0 and 499 are typically reserved for system accounts.

-h, --help
Display help message and exit.

-K KEY=VALUE
Overrides /etc/login.defs defaults (GID_MIN, GID_MAX and others). Multiple -K options can be specified.

Example: -K GID_MIN=100
-K GID_MAX=499

Note: -K GID_MIN=10,GID_MAX=499 doesn’t work yet.

-o This option permits to add group with non-unique GID.

Files

/etc/group
Group account information.

/etc/gshadow
Secure group account information.

/etc/login.defs
Shadow password suite configuration.

Caveats

Groupnames may only be up to 32 characters long.

If the groupname already exists in an external group database such as NIS, groupadd will deny the group creation request.

Exit Values

The groupadd command exits with the following values:

0 success

2 invalid command syntax

3 invalid argument to option

4 GID not unique (when -o not used)

9 group name not unique

10 can’t update group file

See Also

chfn(1) , chsh(1) , passwd(1) , gpasswd(8) , groupdel(8) , groupmod(8) , login.defs(5) , useradd(8) , userdel(8) , usermod(8) .

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