.\" $NetBSD: groups.7,v 1.8 2020/04/02 20:57:20 roy Exp $ .\" .\" SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-Clause .\" .\" Copyright (c) 2020 The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. .\" All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE NETBSD FOUNDATION, INC. AND CONTRIBUTORS .\" ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED .\" TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR .\" PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE FOUNDATION OR CONTRIBUTORS .\" BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR .\" CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF .\" SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS .\" INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN .\" CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) .\" ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE .\" POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .Dd May 21, 2026 .Dt GROUPS 7 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm groups .Nd standard group names .Sh DESCRIPTION A standard .Fx installation has the following user group names: .Bl -tag -width "realtime" .It Em wheel Users authorized to elevate themselves to the super-user privileges of the root user, meaning uid\~0. Normally the .Em wheel group has gid\~0. .Pp Users who are not in the group .Em wheel are never allowed by .Xr su 1 to gain root privileges. .It Em daemon Used by the set-group-id programs .Xr lpr 1 and .Xr rwho 1 . .It Em kmem Used by the set-group-id programs (like .Xr ktrdump 8 ) that need to access kernel memory .Po Pa /dev/mem and .Pa /dev/kmem are in the group .Em kmem .Pc . See .Xr mem 4 . .It Em sys Historic group. Unused in modern .Fx . .It Em tty Used by the set-group-id programs .Xr wall 1 and .Xr write 1 to allow users to send messages to another tty even if they don't own it (static tty device nodes .Pa /dev/pts/* are all in the group .Em tty ) . See .Xr tty 4 . .It Em operator Users authorized to take backups of disk devices and shut down the machine. .Pp The disk device nodes (such as .Pa /dev/ada0 ) are in the group .Em operator and group-readable so users in the group can read from disk devices, for example with .Xr dump 8 . The tape device nodes (such as .Pa /dev/sa0 ) are in the group .Em operator and are both group-readable and group-writable so users in the group can write to tape devices. .Pp The .Xr shutdown 8 program is executable only by root and members of the .Em operator group. .It Em mail Used by mail agents (like .Xr dma 8 ) . .Pp By default, root mail .Pq Pa /var/mail/root is in the .Em mail group. .It Em bin Historic group. Unused in modern .Fx . .It Em news Historic group. Unused in modern .Fx . .It Em man Historic group; used to be used for managing manual pages (see .Xr man 1 ) . .It Em games Used by various set-group-id games to maintain high-scores files and other common files in .Pa /var/games . The members of this group are also allowed to access .Pa /dev/input/event* device nodes (see .Xr hgame 4 ) . See also .Xr intro 6 . .It Em ftp Used to be used by .Xr sysinstall 8 (which is now replaced with .Xr bsdinstall 8 ) for setting up anonymous FTP. Unused in modern .Fx . .It Em staff Staff users, in contrast to guest users (see .Em guest group). Not used by .Fx ; available for the administrator's interpretation. See .Xr security 7 for some recommendations on managing accounts in .Em staff group. .It Em sshd Primary group for the .Em sshd pseudo-user used by the .Xr sshd 8 secure shell daemon. .It Em smmsp Primary group for user .Em smmsp , which is used by .Xr sendmail 8 if no non-root users were configured for running it. .Pp The name of the group means "SendMail Message Submission Program". .It Em mailnull Used by electronic mail transport agent .Xr sendmail 8 as group for its default user .Em mailnull . .It Em guest Guest users, in contrast to staff users (see .Em staff group). Not used by .Fx ; available for the administrator's interpretation. .It Em audio Used to access any device node created by .Xr sound 4 , device drivers, and .Xr virtual_oss 8 . .It Em video Used for access to .Pa /dev/drm/* devices, which are used for GPU hardware acceleration. See .Xr drm 7 . .It Em realtime Used by .Xr mac_priority 4 to allow members of this group to run threads and processes with realtime scheduling priority. See also .Xr rtprio 1 . .It Em idletime Used by .Xr mac_priority 4 to allow members of this group to run processes with idle scheduling priority. See also .Xr idprio 1 . .It Em bind Used to be used as primary group for the .Em bind pseudo-user used by .Xr named 8 Internet domain name server, which has been removed from the base system in .Fx 10.0 . .It Em unbound Primary group for the .Em unbound pseudo-user used by the .Xr local-unbound 8 recursive DNS resolver. .It Em proxy Primary group for the .Em proxy pseudo-user used by the .Xr ftp-proxy 8 proxy daemon with packet filters such as .Xr pf 4 . .It Em authpf Used by the set-group-id program .Xr authpf 8 to configure authenticated gateways. .It Em _pflogd Primary group for the .Em _pflogd pseudo-user used by the .Xr pflogd 8 log daemon with the .Xr pf 4 packet filter. .It Em _dhcp Primary group for the .Em _dhcp pseudo-user used by the .Xr dhclient 8 DHCP Client. .It Em dialer Users authorized to make outgoing modem calls (see .Xr cu 1 and .Pa /dev/cuauN devices). .It Em network Historic group. Unused in modern .Fx . .It Em audit Primary group for the .Em auditdistd pseudo-user used by .Xr auditd 8 and .Xr auditdistd 8 audit daemons. .It Em www Historic group for accessing World Wide Web. Unused in modern .Fx . .It Em u2f Used for users who need to access .Pa /dev/u2f/* devices (see .Xr u2f 4 ) . .It Em ntpd Primary group for the .Em ntpd pseudo-user used by the .Xr ntpd 8 network time protocol daemon. .It Em _ypldap Primary group for the .Em _ypldap pseudo-user used by .Xr ypldap 8 daemon. .It Em hast Primary group for the .Em hast pseudo-user used by Highly Available Storage daemon .Xr hastd 8 . .It Em tests Primary group for the .Em tests pseudo-user used by automatic tests that request to run unprivileged. See .Xr tests 7 . .It Em nogroup Pseudo-group (fake group). It differs from group .Em nobody in way that .Em nogroup doesn't have a dedicated user for it. For instance, this group is used for users .Em tty and .Em kmem . .It Em nobody Primary group for the traditional .Em nobody pseudo-user. Modern practice is to assign to each different daemon its own separate pseudo-user account and group so that if one daemon is compromised it does not compromise all the other daemons. .Pp See also group .Em nogroup . .El .Sh FILES .Bl -tag -width "/usr/src/etc/group" -compact .It Pa /etc/group Main group permissions file. .It Pa /usr/src/etc/group Group permissions file for the base system. .It Pa /usr/ports/GIDs A list of GIDs (group IDs) reserved for ports (see .Xr ports 7 ) . .El .Pp See .Xr group 5 for the format of abovementioned files. .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr chgrp 1 , .Xr groups 1 , .Xr id 1 , .Xr newgrp 1 , .Xr group 5 , .Xr pw 8 .Sh HISTORY The .Nm manual page appeared in .Nx 10.0 and .Fx 15.1 .
