The Linux and Unix Menagerie: Simple Script To List Groups In Passwd File Output On Linux And Unix

Hey There,

Today's simple, but somewhat useful, little Bash Script is brought to you by "The Human Fund: Money For People" ;) That was shamelessly lifted from "Seinfeld," but I always liked that fake name better than UNICEF ;)

Basically, todays Bash script manipulates the output of a simple "cat" of the /etc/passwd file and interpolates primary and secondary group values, for each user, into their respective output lines. It should run equally well on virtually any Linux or Unix distro since the passwd fields are in the same order on almost all of them and it doesn't make use of any of the group file fields past the fourth (so extended group files shouldn't affect this).

NOTE: This script goes well with this bash one liner to generate somewhat fancy w output. Haven't had your fill of pap for the day? Check that out ;)

The output you'll get from the script is similar to a simple "cat" of the /etc/password file (senility awareness kicking in - I just mentioned that ;), except that the fourth field will be modified. When you run this script, you'll notice that the fourth field of colon-delimited output includes alpha dash (-) delimited output of the form: pg=XXXX-sg=XXXX, rather than just the standard numeric Primary Group ID. The "pg" stands for Primary Group and the "sg" stands for Secondary Group. The Secondary Group, it should be noted, may contain more than one entry (split by commas), if the user belongs to more than one secondary group, and will print "NONE" if the user ID being listed doesn't belong to any groups other than its primary.

The script's simple to to run (because it doesn't have any fancy options ;) and should work fairly quickly (although, like everything, it could probably be more efficient. Once I fully develop my insect-like ability to differentiate microseconds, this sort of thing will bother me much more ;).

To run it, simply run it, like so, and you'll get your output (This is from a stripped Solaris box with only one user account and several useless standard accounts removed):

host # ./pwgroups
root:x:0:pg=root-sg=root,other,bin,sys,adm,uucp,mail,tty,lp,nuucp,daemon:Super-User:/:/sbin/sh
daemon:x:1:pg=other-sg=bin,adm,daemon::/:
bin:x:2:pg=bin-sg=bin,sys::/usr/bin:
sys:x:3:pg=sys-sg=sys::/:
adm:x:4:pg=adm-sg=sys,adm,tty,lp:Admin:/var/adm:
lp:x:71:pg=lp-sg=lp:Line Printer Admin:/usr/spool/lp:
uucp:x:5:pg=uucp-sg=uucp:uucp Admin:/usr/lib/uucp:
nuucp:x:9:pg=nuucp-sg=nuucp:uucp Admin:/var/spool/uucppublic:/usr/lib/uucp/uucico
smmsp:x:25:pg=smmsp-sg=smmsp:SendMail Message Submission Program:/:
listen:x:37:pg=adm-sg=NONE:Network Admin:/usr/net/nls:
webservd:x:80:pg=webservd-sg=webservd:WebServer Reserved UID:/:
postgres:x:90:pg=postgres-sg=postgres:PostgreSQL Reserved UID:/:/usr/bin/pfksh
nobody:x:60001:pg=nobody-sg=nobody:NFS Anonymous Access User:/:
noaccess:x:60002:pg=noaccess-sg=noaccess:No Access User:/:
nobody4:x:65534:pg=nogroup-sg=NONE:SunOS 4.x NFS Anonymous Access User:/:
user1:x:37527:pg=unixteam-sg=guys,folks:Captain Beefmeat:/export/home/user1:/bin/bash

Sure, this script won't save lives (or even change any ;) but I have found use for it from time to time. ...Which stands to reason, I suppose. If I don't think I'm ever going to do something again, I almost never script it out ;)

Hope you find it useful or, at least, mildly amusing :)

Cheers,

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

#!/bin/bash

#
# pwgroups - add alpha primary and secondary group information to /etc/passwd output
#
# 2009 - Mike Golvach - eggi@comcast.net
#
# Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License
#

export IFS=":"
while read one two three four five six seven
do
        pri=$(grep -w ${four} /etc/group|awk -F":" '{print $1}')
        sec=$(echo `grep -w ${one} /etc/group|awk -F":" '{print $1}'`|xargs echo|sed 's/ /,/g')
        if [[ ${#sec} -eq 0 ]]
        then
                sec=NONE
        fi
        echo "${one}:${two}:${three}:pg=${pri}-sg=${sec}:${five}:${six}:${seven}"
done </etc/passwd