Table of Contents

Introduction

Welcome back to Day 6 of my Linux Mastery series. Yesterday, we handled user management, and today, we dive into something equally crucial: group management.

If users are like individual employees, groups are like departments, and managing departments is how you keep things organized in a company. The same thing applies in Linux.

What are "Groups" in Linux?

A group in Linux is a way to assign a shared set of permissions to multiple users. It simplifies access control.

There are two types of groups:

  • Primary Group: Automatically created with a user and is their default group.

  • Secondary Group: Optional groups the user can be added to, for shared access.

We also have the Group account Database:

  • Group Account Properties: /etc/group
  • Group Admin Properties: /etc/gshadow

Core Group Management Commands

Group Management Commands Purpose
groupadd 'group' Create a new group
grep 'groupname' etc/group Check group account properties
grep 'groupname' etc/gshadow Check group admin properties
groupmod -g 'groupname' Modify group ID
gpasswd -a 'username' 'groupname' Add a single member/user to a group
gpasswd -d 'username' 'groupname' Remove a single member/user from a group
gpasswd -M 'user1,user2,user3' 'groupname' Add/Remove multiple users in a group. Note: When doing this it replaces existing users. For retaining of existing users include their names when running this command
gpasswd -A 'username' 'groupname' Make a user/member the group admin
gpasswd -A 'user1, user2, user3, etc' 'groupname' Assigns multi-admins
groupmod -n 'newname' 'oldname' Rename a group
groupdel 'groupname' Delete the group account
cat /etc/group View all groups and members

Real-World Scenario: Team Access Control in a Cloud Project

Imagine you are working at Cloud Whistler, and your infrastructure team is setting up a multi-environment project called 'cloudinfra'.

Your team is divided into three key roles:

  • DevOps Engineers
  • Network Engineers
  • Support Engineers

You need to:

  • Set up proper group permissions.
  • Assign the right users to the right groups.
  • Ensure people only access what they need.

Let’s walk through it step by step.

  • Create Groups for the job Roles (DevOps, Network, and Support) 
groupadd devops
groupadd network
groupadd support

groupadd1 description

groupadd2 description

  • Rename a Group

Your team lead decides that the support team will now be called monitoring.

groupmod -n monitoring support

groupname description

  • Add Users to Groups

Let's say you have three new hires:
AmandaIgwe and Jide - devOps
Tunde - network
Chris - monitoring

*Note: before adding users to the group make sure you have already created the user first. (using useradd command)
*

gpasswd -a AmandaIgwe devops
gpasswd -a Jide devops
gpasswd -a Tunde network
gpasswd -a Chris monitoring

groupuser description

  • Remove User from a group

Now, let’s say Jide is rotating off the project, and you want to remove him from the group

gpasswd -d Jide devops

groupdel description

  • Verify Group Membership

You are doing an audit and want to check if AmandaIgwe still belongs to any groups.

grep AmandaIgwe /etc/group

groupid description

Note the following output meaning:

  • devops = group name
  • x = password store
  • 1003 = group ID
  • AmandaIgwe = stands for the group members

And that's it!

Conclusion

As a Cloud or Systems Engineer, you are expected to:

  • Set up secure access control

  • Manage team-level permissions

  • Automate user provisioning

  • Be audit-ready for compliance

These group management commands are your everyday tools for doing that cleanly and confidently.

If this is helpful to you, feel free to bookmark, comment, like and follow me for Day 6!

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