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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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 set from objective 107 and space the ones you get wrong.