Administering user accounts

About groups

Groups allow sets of users to share files. The group permissions on a file or directory determine whether members of a group can access them.

You can set the group of a file or directory by changing its properties from the desktop or by using the chgrp(1) command. For more information on the desktop, see ``Using the CDE desktop''.

A user can be a member of several groups at once, and can access any file or directory that is within their group set (if group permissions allow). This membership set is known as the ``supplemental group list''. By default, files created by a user have the group ID of their login group. Users can change their current working group (also known as effective group ID) with the newgrp(1M) command.

NOTE: When files are created in a directory, the group ownership is determined by the setting of the GID bit. See ``Setting the group ID for file creation in a directory''.