newgrp(1) General Commands Manual newgrp(1)
NAME
newgrp - switch to a new group
SYNOPSIS
[group]
DESCRIPTION
The command changes your group ID without changing your user ID and replaces your current shell with a new one.
If you specify group, the change is successful if group exists and either your user ID is a member of the new group, or group has a pass-
word and you can supply it from the terminal.
If you omit group, changes to the group specified in your entry in the password file,
Whether the group is changed successfully or not, or the new group is the same as the old one or not, proceeds to replace your current
shell with the one specified in the shell field of your password file entry. If that field is empty, uses the POSIX shell, (see sh-
posix(1)).
If you specify (hyphen) as the first argument, the new shell starts up as if you had just logged in. If you omit the new shell starts up
as if you had invoked it as a subshell.
You remain logged in and the current directory is unchanged, but calculations of access permissions to files are performed with respect to
the new real and effective group IDs.
Exported variables retain their values and are passed to the new shell. All unexported variables are deleted, but the new shell may reset
them to default values.
Since the current process is replaced when the new shell is started, exiting from the new shell has the same effect as exiting from the
shell in which was executed.
EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
International Code Set Support
Characters from the 7-bit USASCII code set are supported in group names (see ascii(5)).
DIAGNOSTICS
The command issues the following error messages:
Your user ID does not qualify as a group member.
The group name does not exist in
If a password is required, it must come from a terminal.
Standard input is not a terminal file,
causing the new shell to fail.
EXAMPLES
To change from your current group to group without executing the login routines:
To change from your current group to group and execute the login routines:
WARNINGS
There is no convenient way to enter a password into
The use of group passwords is not recommended because, by their very nature, they encourage poor security practices. Group passwords may
be eliminated in future HP-UX releases.
If the specified group to has multiple inconsistent entries (i.e. the group id or/and password are different) in the group database, will
consider the group id and password of the first matched group entry as the correct group id and password for the group.
FILES
System group file
System password file
SEE ALSO
csh(1), ksh(1), login(1), sh-posix(1), group(4), passwd(4), environ(5).
STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
newgrp(1)