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Eaten by a Grue
Asked: 2024-09-05 23:08:11 +0800 CST

New default user group "users"

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Apparently the group "users" has existed in the past but AFAIK went largely unused. Now in Ubuntu 24 new users created with adduser are added to it by default:

info: Adding new user `example' to supplemental / extra groups `users' ...
info: Adding user `example' to group `users' ...

I don't recall ever seeing this in the past. What is the purpose of the group "users" and for what reason has default the behaviour of adduser changed?

groups

2 Answers

  1. The users group is an old way of grouping regular users (non administrative rights) into one single group.

    It made easier the life of system administrators to have such a group so they could perform tasks more easily throughout all regular users.

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  2. Best Answer

    The users group was supposed to be used when you don't use the User Private Group system (where a group is created for each new user with the same name as the user). At least, that's what the documentation implies. See /usr/share/doc/base-passwd/users-and-groups.txt.gz in your system, which is generated from this file:

    <term>users</term>
<listitem>
  <para>
    While Debian systems use the user-group system by default (each
    user has their own group), some prefer to use a more traditional
    group system. In that system, each user is a member of the
    'users' group.
  </para>
</listitem>

    This change came about as a result of Debian bug #678615 from 2012, which said:

    The default adduser.conf now has all ADD_EXTRA_GROUPS settings disabled.

    However, as the debian default is to use user(private)groups, this leaves the general "users" group unpopulated.

    Please enable the standard "users" group as a default extra group, to ensure it has the same consistent setup and meaning whether user(private)groups are used or not.

    It seems the base-passwd documentation was either not consulted, or not updated, when making this change.

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