How To Add A Group In Linux

Changing the group a user is associated to is a fairly easy task, but not everybody knows the commands, especially to add a user to a secondary group. We'll walk through all the scenarios for you.

User accounts can be assigned to one or more than groups on Linux. You can configure file permissions and other privileges by group. For example, on Ubuntu, but users in the sudo group can use the sudo command to gain elevated permissions.

If you're using a new Linux laptop, you lot might have some type of GUI interface to configure these settings (depending on the distribution that you're running, at least) only realistically it'due south about always easier to only drop down to the terminal and type out a few commands, so that'due south what nosotros're showing you today.

Add together a New Group

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If you want to create a new grouping on your system, apply the groupadd command following control, replacing new_group with the name of the group you want to create. You'll demand to use sudo with this control every bit well (or, on Linux distributions that don't use sudo, you lot'll need to run thesu command on its ain to gain elevated permissions earlier running the control).

sudo groupadd mynewgroup

Add an Existing User Business relationship to a Group

To add together an existing user account to a group on your system, use the usermod command, replacing examplegroup with the name of the group y'all desire to add together the user to andexampleusername with the proper noun of the user you want to add.

usermod -a -Thousand examplegroup exampleusername

For case, to add the user geek to the group sudo , use the post-obit command:

usermod -a -Grand sudo geek

Modify a User's Primary Group

While a user account can be part of multiple groups, one of the groups is always the "chief group" and the others are "secondary groups". The user's login process and files and folders the user creates will exist assigned to the master group.

To change the master group a user is assigned to, run the usermod command, replacingexamplegroup with the proper name of the grouping you desire to be the primary and exampleusernamewith the name of the user account.

usermod -chiliad groupname username

Note the -1000 here. When you apply a lowercase thousand, you assign a primary group. When you use an capital letter -G , as above, yous assign a new secondary group.

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View the Groups a User Account is Assigned To

To view the groups the current user business relationship is assigned to, run the groups command. You'll see a list of groups.

groups

To view the numerical IDs associated with each group, run the id control instead:

id

To view the groups another user business relationship is assigned to, run the groups command and specify the proper name of the user account.

groups exampleusername

You tin can also view the numerical IDs associated with each group by running the id command and specifying a username.

id exampleusername

The commencement group in the groups listing or the group shown afterward "gid=" in the id listing is the user account's main grouping. The other groups are the secondary groups. And so, in the screenshot below, the user account's main group is example.

Create a New User and Assign a Group in One Command

You may sometimes want to create a new user account that has admission to a item resource or directory, like a new FTP user. You can specify the groups a user account will be assigned to while creating the user account with the useradd command, like so:

useradd -Thousand examplegroup exampleusername

For case, to create a new user account named jsmith and assign that business relationship to the ftp group, y'all'd run:

useradd -1000 ftp jsmith

Yous'll want to assign a password for that user later on, of course:

passwd jsmith

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Add a User to Multiple Groups

While assigning the secondary groups to a user business relationship, you tin can easily assign multiple groups at one time by separating the list with a comma.

usermod -a -Thousand group1,group2,group3 exampleusername

For example, to add together the user named geek to the ftp, sudo, and example groups, yous'd run:

usermod -a -G ftp,sudo,example geek

You tin can specify as many groups as you like—just separate them all with a comma.

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View All Groups on the Organisation

If you desire to view a list of all groups on your organisation, you tin can utilize the getent command:

getent grouping

This output volition too show you which user accounts are members of which groups. So, in the screenshot below, we tin see that the user accounts syslog and chris are members of the adm group.

That should cover everything you lot demand to know about adding users to groups on Linux.

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