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The file consists
of newline separated records, one per group, containing four colon separated
fields. These fields are as follows: Name of the group. Group’s password.
The group’s decimal ID. Group members. The field is the group name used
for granting file access to users who are members of the group. The field
is the number associated with the group name. They should both be unique
across the system (and often across a group of systems) since they control
file access. The field is an optional password. This field is rarely used
and an asterisk is normally placed in it rather than leaving it blank. The
field contains the names of users granted the privileges of The member
names are separated by commas without spaces or newlines. A user is automatically
in a group if that group was specified in their entry and does not need
to be added to that group in the
If YP is active,
the file may also contain lines of the format +name:*:: which causes
the specified group to be included from the YP map. If no group name is
specified, or the ‘‘+’’ (plus sign) appears alone on line, all groups are included
from the YP map. YP references may appear anywhere in the file, but the
single ‘‘+’’ form should be on the last line, for historical reasons. Only the
first group with a specific name encountered, whether in the file itself,
or included via YP, will be used.
The command
does not change the passwords.
A file format appeared in YP file
format first appeared in SunOS.
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