GSHADOW(5)

NAME
gshadow - shadowed group file

DESCRIPTION

/etc/gshadow contains the shadowed information for group accounts. It contains lines with the following colon-separated fields:

•   group name

•   encrypted password

•   comma-separated list of group administrators

•   comma-separated list of group members

The group name and password fields must be filled. The encrypted password consists of characters from the 64-character alphabet a thru z, A thru Z, 0 thru 9, \. and /. Refer to crypt(3) for details on how this string is interpreted. If the password field contains some string that is not valid result of crypt(3), for instance ! or *, the user will not be able to use a unix password to log in, subject to pam(7).

This information supersedes any password present in /etc/group.

This file must not be readable by regular users if password security is to be maintained.

FILES

/etc/group
    group account information

/etc/gshadow
    secure group account information

SEE ALSO

group(5), gpasswd(5), newgrp(5).