A line in /etc/group reads `developers:x:1500:alice,bob`. What does the final field contain?
LPIC-1 Exam 102-500, objective 107. Administrative tasks medium
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How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Not correct The users for whom developers is the primary group
Wrong, and a common confusion. Primary group membership is recorded by the GID field of the user's own line in /etc/passwd, not here. A user whose primary group is developers normally does not appear in this list at all.
Correct The list of users who have developers as a supplementary group
Correct. The four fields are group name, password placeholder, GID and the comma-separated list of supplementary members.
Not correct The group administrators permitted to add members with gpasswd
Wrong. Group administrators are recorded in /etc/gshadow, whose fields are group name, encrypted group password, administrator list and member list.
Not correct The other groups nested inside developers, since a Linux group may contain groups as well as users
Wrong. Linux groups do not nest: there is no way to make one group a member of another, so this field only ever holds user names. Nested groups are a directory-service idea (Active Directory, LDAP groupOfNames) that has no equivalent in /etc/group.
Why
/etc/group is name:password:GID:members. The x in the second field means any group password lives in /etc/gshadow, which is root-readable only and additionally carries the group administrator list. Because primary membership lives in /etc/passwd, a full picture of a user's groups needs both files, which is what `id` and `groups` give you.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- LPI exam objective 107.1
- What it says
- Know the format and meaning of the fields in /etc/group and /etc/gshadow.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 107 and space the ones you get wrong.
More questions on this objective
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- On a host whose accounts come partly from local files and partly from a directory service, `grep alice /etc/passwd` returns nothing even though `id alice` works. Which command shows alice's account entry the way the system itself resolves it? machine-checked
- Policy says passwords must be changed at least every 90 days, and the account carol must comply. Which command sets that maximum password age? machine-checked
- Select the THREE statements that correctly describe /etc/shadow on a typical Linux system. machine-checked