ID Numbering in Group and Passwd

[Justin Zygmont]

On Thu, 24 Nov 2005, Tim wrote:

> On Wed, 2005-11-23 at 17:25 +0000, Dave Brown wrote:
>> I've noticed a bit of an interesting thing with regards to the
>> numbering of new users and groups when using the useradd and groupadd
>> (and luseradd / lgroupadd) commands.
>>
>> Fresh system with no user accounts on it. Create a group called
>> "myfamily" using "groupadd myfamily" - the file /etc/group now has the
>> entry "myfamily:x:500". Create the user "brother" using "useradd
>> brother"  - the file /etc/passwd now has
>> "brother:x:500:501::/home/brother:/bin/bash" and /etc/group has
>> "brother:x:501"
>>
>> As you can see the utilities have created the user brother with a
>> userid of 500 and a groupid of 501. All the system accounts (and if
>> you created any users before you created the group) will have the
>> groupid equal to the userid. The unequal userid / groupid combo doesnt
>> cause a problem as the home directory permissions created for the user
>> are fine.
>
> When I've just used the GUI tool, each new user has has the same UID and
> GUI, each incrementing by one for each new user.  But if I added a user
> with a manual UID, using the GUI, the GID would automatically be one
> higher than the last automatically generated GID.  Using the CLI, they'd
> both get the same GID and UID.
>
> e.g. On a system with
>
> Name     UID   GID
> John     500   500
> Martha   501   501
> George   502   502
> Fred     508   508
>
> If I now added a new user via the GUI, leaving it to pick GID and UIDs,
> they'd both be 503.
>
> But if I added a new users using the GUI, opting to set the UID as 515,
> it'd set the GID as 503 (the lowest free value).
>
> But if I'd added them using the CLI (as 515, again), they'd both be 515.
>
> I wish the GUI tool would either let me, also, set the GID, or set them
> both the same as each other.  It might well be that I want to add a few
> usernames, but put them all into a guests group, for instance.  I'd have
> to do that via the command line (or a script).

sounds like the GUI tools arent using the UPG scheme where each user is in 
their own group, not sure if it is a bug, but it seems like it probably 
is.  It just goes to show the command line is the best way to use an OS.