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ziaee
des
maxim

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rG0ac3db880552: groups.7: New manual page of standard group names
rG2c4190609c78: groups.7: New manual page of standard group names
rGe09104dfb76a: groups.7: New manual page of standard group names

Summary

I'm not 100% sure whether every statement and group description is true for FreeBSD and its current state. Please, point out mistakes in my assumptions.

The group list is sorted by GID. All the group names from /usr/src/etc/group are described, except "uucp": honestly, I don't know what it is used for and what to say about it.

The FILES section was added on top of the original manual page.

PR: 264966
Obtained from: NetBSD

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rG FreeBSD src repository

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temcbun_gmail.com created this revision.Dec 7 2025, 9:01 PM

Herald added a subscriber: imp. · View Herald TranscriptDec 7 2025, 9:01 PM

temcbun_gmail.com requested review of this revision.Dec 7 2025, 9:01 PM

temcbun_gmail.com added inline comments.Dec 7 2025, 9:11 PM

share/man/man7/groups.7
4–5	What should I do with the license? The page was not only imported, but changed for FreeBSD. I also did change some of the original parts.
208	I'm not sure if I'm right about this one.
247	I'm not quite sure about this one too. If I understand correctly, it must be somehow related to group "uucp" (which is missed), since on my machine /dev/cuau2 is owned by used "uucp" and in group "dialer".
253	I'm not sure if it's really unused now. Didn't find much about it in /usr/src.
265	As above.
269	Didn't have any experience with it, just tried to deduce what it is used for :)
301	That's only my guess described here. Maybe there is a different reason why there are "nogroup" and "nobody".

'December' instead of 'Dec'.

temcbun_gmail.com mentioned this in D54154: groups.7: Cross-reference in other man pages.Dec 9 2025, 4:41 PM

ziaee added a child revision: D54154: groups.7: Cross-reference in other man pages.Dec 9 2025, 5:19 PM

Add groups(7) cross-references into other man pages.

I'm also going to port users(7) man page. The structure and the overall idea of these two pages are very similar; do you have some notes/advises that I can learn from this page and apply to users(7)?

@ziaee I've been thinking: maybe it would be a nice idea to create hard links for this manual page: wheel.7 and operator.7? wheel and operator are the most noticeable groups and people frequently have questions about their purpose, so it would be nice to be able to do man wheel or man operator. We have the similar thing for builtin.1 which has a link to every builtin command: https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/share/man/man1/Makefile?id=4b0d5d1d6a7c9773e38882feb4747a76b37a645c#n13

Sorry I haven't had time to review this yet!

I don't know about adding mlinks. We can't really do it consistently without creating a lot of collision in the apropos database, which is hard for beginners to navigate.

share/man/man7/groups.7
4–5	The license always stays, that's what the first clause therein says (lines 9 and 10), but add a SPDX tag at the top so we can index it mechanically.

temcbun_gmail.com added inline comments.Jan 3 2026, 5:15 PM

share/man/man7/groups.7
4–5	That should be 'SPDX-License-Identifier: BSD-2-Clause', right?

imp added inline comments.Jan 3 2026, 5:32 PM

share/man/man7/groups.7
4–5	Yes. I believe this is the standard BSD-2-Clause, or close enough, that this is the right thing.

Add SPDX-License-Identifier.

temcbun_gmail.com marked 2 inline comments as done.Jan 3 2026, 5:55 PM

In D54114#1244827, @ziaee wrote:

Sorry I haven't had time to review this yet!

I don't know about adding mlinks. We can't really do it consistently without creating a lot of collision in the apropos database, which is hard for beginners to navigate.

@imp (sorry, I'm not sure if you can answer this, but since you've been active on this revision) do you think that adding mlinks would be worth it or it is better to avoid such hard links?

Update diff with -U9999.

Ping.

temcbun_gmail.com added a reviewer: Contributor Reviews (src).Feb 4 2026, 6:19 PM

temcbun_gmail.com added a project: docs.

Document that games group is used by hgame(4) (since b6cad334e64).
Correct several mandoc -T lint warnings.
Document that bind(8) was removed from the base in FreeBSD 10.0.
Replace reference to unbound(8) with local-unbound(8).
Remove references to setuid(7), since NetBSD has this page, but FreeBSD does not.

Add MLINKS: wheel.7 and operator.7.

Could somebody please review this? Or maybe tag appropriate people?

temcbun_gmail.com added inline comments.Mar 15 2026, 6:31 PM

share/man/man7/groups.7

41–43

May be that would be relevant to mention that this behaviour can be changed with pam_group(8)? From su(1):

PAM is used to set the policy su will use.  In particular, by default only users in the “wheel” group can switch to UID 0 (“root”).  This group requirement may be changed by modifying the “pam_group” section of /etc/pam.d/su.  See pam_group(8) for details on how to modify this setting.

Rebase the patch.
Don't add operator.7 in MLINKS, since this man page already exists.

Looks good to me. Thanks for doing the work!

des accepted this revision.Apr 25 2026, 6:00 PM

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Apr 25 2026, 6:00 PM

Awesome! I will merge this on Monday if nobody else has anything to add/does it sooner. Thank you so much, this is a great feature!

share/man/man7/groups.7
341–345	Completely option note or nit: I usually write it like this. The fact it first appeared implies in another operating system explicitly states that it was ported to FreeBSD, therefore no need to mention FreeBSD twice in the same sentence or even have another sentence at all.

Simplify sentence in HISTORY section.

This revision now requires review to proceed.Apr 25 2026, 9:33 PM

Add chgrp(1), id(1) and newgrp(1) in groups(7) SEE ALSO section.

temcbun_gmail.com edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)Apr 26 2026, 8:05 PM

temcbun_gmail.com mentioned this in D56648: users.7: Standard user account names.Apr 26 2026, 8:27 PM

This revision was not accepted when it landed; it landed in state Needs Review.Apr 28 2026, 1:54 PM

Closed by commit rGe09104dfb76a: groups.7: New manual page of standard group names (authored by temcbun_gmail.com, committed by ziaee). · Explain Why

This revision was automatically updated to reflect the committed changes.

ziaee added a commit: rGe09104dfb76a: groups.7: New manual page of standard group names.

ziaee added a commit: rG2c4190609c78: groups.7: New manual page of standard group names.May 1 2026, 3:13 PM

cperciva added a commit: rG0ac3db880552: groups.7: New manual page of standard group names.May 28 2026, 10:16 PM

groups.7: Standard group names
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Diff 171173

share/man/man5/group.5

share/man/man5/passwd.5

share/man/man7/Makefile

share/man/man7/groups.7

usr.bin/id/groups.1

usr.bin/id/id.1

usr.bin/newgrp/newgrp.1

usr.sbin/adduser/adduser.8

usr.sbin/chkgrp/chkgrp.8

usr.sbin/chown/chgrp.1

usr.sbin/chown/chown.8

usr.sbin/pw/pw.8

groups.7: Standard group namesClosedPublicActions

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Diff 171173

share/man/man5/group.5

share/man/man5/passwd.5

share/man/man7/Makefile

share/man/man7/groups.7

usr.bin/id/groups.1

usr.bin/id/id.1

usr.bin/newgrp/newgrp.1

usr.sbin/adduser/adduser.8

usr.sbin/chkgrp/chkgrp.8

usr.sbin/chown/chgrp.1

usr.sbin/chown/chown.8

usr.sbin/pw/pw.8

groups.7: Standard group names
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