The /etc/group is a plain text file still used in Debian 13 (Trixie) as it core component1 of user and group management. There is one entry per line, and each line has the following format (all fields are separated by a colon (:).
| Group Name | Password | Group ID | Members |
|---|---|---|---|
| root | x | 0 | |
| daemon | x | 1 | |
| bin | x | 2 | |
| sys | x | 3 | |
| adm | x | 4 | |
| tty | x | 5 | |
| disk | x | 6 | |
| lp | x | 7 | |
| x | 8 | ||
| news | x | 9 | |
| uucp | x | 10 | |
| man | x | 12 | |
| proxy | x | 13 | |
| kmem | x | 15 | |
| dialout | x | 20 | |
| fax | x | 21 | |
| voice | x | 22 | |
| cdrom | x | 24 | bhdicaire |
| floppy | x | 25 | bhdicaire |
| tape | x | 26 | |
| sudo | x | 27 | |
| audio | x | 29 | bhdicaire |
| dip | x | 30 | bhdicaire |
| www-data | x | 33 | |
| backup | x | 34 | |
| operator | x | 37 | |
| list | x | 38 | |
| irc | x | 39 | |
| src | x | 40 | |
| shadow | x | 42 | |
| utmp | x | 43 | |
| video | x | 44 | bhdicaire |
| sasl | x | 45 | |
| plugdev | x | 46 | bhdicaire |
| staff | x | 50 | |
| games | x | 60 | |
| users | x | 100 | bhdicaire,badicaire |
| nogroup | x | 65534 | |
| systemd-journal | x | 999 | |
| systemd-network | x | 998 | |
| crontab | x | 997 | |
| input | x | 996 | |
| sgx | x | 995 | |
| clock | x | 994 | |
| kvm | x | 993 | |
| render | x | 992 | |
| netdev | x | 101 | bhdicaire |
| scanner | x | 102 | saned,bhdicaire |
| tss | x | 103 | |
| systemd-timesync | x | 991 | |
| messagebus | x | 990 | |
| _ssh | x | 104 | |
| ssl-cert | x | 105 | |
| bluetooth | x | 106 | bhdicaire |
| avahi | x | 107 | |
| lpadmin | x | 108 | bhdicaire |
| pipewire | x | 109 | |
| fwupd-refresh | x | 988 | |
| geoclue | x | 110 | |
| gnome-remote-desktop | x | 987 | |
| saned | x | 111 | |
| polkitd | x | 986 | |
| rtkit | x | 112 | |
| colord | x | 113 | |
| Debian-gdm | x | 114 | |
| bhdicaire | x | 1000 |
Cheat Sheet
Find Out the Groups a User Is In: groups {username}
Sample outputs:
Print user / group Identity
id -g vivek
To create a new group named sales, run: sudo groupadd sales sudo groupadd –gid 3000 blogusers
ceate a new system group named sysftp? sudo groupadd –system sysftp
-
It defines the groups on the system and specifies which users belong to those groups in Linux and UNIX-like operating systems. ↩︎