Creating a Group on Ubuntu Desktop Or Server

Group is a way to organize and administer user accounts in Linux. Groups are used to collectively assign rights and permissions to multiple user accounts.

Getting ready

You will need super user or root privileges to add a group to the Ubuntu server.

How to do it…

Follow these steps to create a group:

Enter the following command to add a new group:

$ sudo addgroup guest

Enter your password to complete addgroup with root privileges.

How it works…

Here, we are adding a new group to the server named guest. As group creation is also an administrative task, it asks for the root privileges, so we need to execute the addgroup command along with sudo. After adding a new group into the system, the addgroup will display the group ID (GID)of the newly created group.

Similar to adduser, you can use addgroup in different modes:

• Add a normal group when used without any options
• Add a system group with the --system option
• Add an existing user to an existing group when called with two non-option arguments

Check out the manual page for the addgroup(man addgroup) to get more details.

Adding group members

Once you have groups in place, you can add existing users as well as new users to that group. All access rights and permissions assigned to the group will be automatically available to all the members of the group.

Getting ready

You will need super user or root privileges to add a group member to the Ubuntu server.

How to do it…

Follow these steps to add group members:

Here, you can use adduser command with two non-option arguments:

$ sudo adduser john guest

Enter your password to complete addgroup with root privileges.

How it works…

As mentioned previously, you can use the adduser command to add an existing user to an existing group. Here, we have passed two non-option arguments:

• john: This is the name of the user to be added to the group
• guest: This is the name of the group

Alternatively, you can use the command usermod to modify the group assigned to the user:

$ sudo usermod -g <group> <username>

To add a user to multiple groups, use the following command:

$ sudo usermod -a -G <group1>,<group2>,<group3> <username>

This will add <username> to <group1>, <group2>, and <group3>. Without flag –a, any previously assigned groups will be replaced with new groups.