path: root/share/man/man7/groups.7

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.Dd May 21, 2026
.Dt GROUPS 7
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm groups
.Nd standard group names
.Sh DESCRIPTION
A standard
.Fx
installation has the following user group names:
.Bl -tag -width "realtime"
.It Em wheel
Users authorized to elevate themselves to the super-user privileges of
the root user, meaning uid\~0.
Normally the
.Em wheel
group has gid\~0.
.Pp
Users who are not in the group
.Em wheel
are never allowed by
.Xr su 1
to gain root privileges.
.It Em daemon
Used by the set-group-id programs
.Xr lpr 1
and
.Xr rwho 1 .
.It Em kmem
Used by the set-group-id programs (like
.Xr ktrdump 8 )
that need to access kernel memory
.Po Pa /dev/mem
and
.Pa /dev/kmem
are in the group
.Em kmem
.Pc .
See
.Xr mem 4 .
.It Em sys
Historic group.
Unused in modern
.Fx .
.It Em tty
Used by the set-group-id programs
.Xr wall 1
and
.Xr write 1
to allow users to send messages to another tty even if they don't own
it (static tty device nodes
.Pa /dev/pts/*
are all in the group
.Em tty ) .
See
.Xr tty 4 .
.It Em operator
Users authorized to take backups of disk devices and shut down the
machine.
.Pp
The disk device nodes
(such as
.Pa /dev/ada0 )
are in the group
.Em operator
and group-readable so users in the group can read from disk devices,
for example with
.Xr dump 8 .
The tape device nodes
(such as
.Pa /dev/sa0 )
are in the group
.Em operator
and are both group-readable and group-writable so users in the group
can write to tape devices.
.Pp
The
.Xr shutdown 8
program is executable only by root and members of the
.Em operator
group.
.It Em mail
Used by mail agents (like
.Xr dma 8 ) .
.Pp
By default, root mail
.Pq Pa /var/mail/root
is in the
.Em mail
group.
.It Em bin
Historic group.
Unused in modern
.Fx .
.It Em news
Historic group.
Unused in modern
.Fx .
.It Em man
Historic group; used to be used for managing manual pages (see
.Xr man 1 ) .
.It Em games
Used by various set-group-id games to maintain high-scores files
and other common files in
.Pa /var/games .
The members of this group are also allowed to access
.Pa /dev/input/event*
device nodes (see
.Xr hgame 4 ) .
See also
.Xr intro 6 .
.It Em ftp
Used to be used by
.Xr sysinstall 8
(which is now replaced with
.Xr bsdinstall 8 )
for setting up anonymous FTP.
Unused in modern
.Fx .
.It Em staff
Staff users, in contrast to guest users (see
.Em guest
group).
Not used by
.Fx ;
available for the administrator's interpretation.
See
.Xr security 7
for some recommendations on managing accounts in
.Em staff
group.
.It Em sshd
Primary group for the
.Em sshd
pseudo-user used by the
.Xr sshd 8
secure shell daemon.
.It Em smmsp
Primary group for user
.Em smmsp ,
which is used by
.Xr sendmail 8
if no non-root users were configured for running it.
.Pp
The name of the group means "SendMail Message Submission Program".
.It Em mailnull
Used by electronic mail transport agent
.Xr sendmail 8
as group for its default user
.Em mailnull .
.It Em guest
Guest users, in contrast to staff users (see
.Em staff
group).
Not used by
.Fx ;
available for the administrator's interpretation.
.It Em audio
Used to access any device node created by
.Xr sound 4 ,
device drivers, and
.Xr virtual_oss 8 .
.It Em video
Used for access to
.Pa /dev/drm/*
devices,  which are used for GPU hardware acceleration.
See
.Xr drm 7 .
.It Em realtime
Used by
.Xr mac_priority 4
to allow members of this group to run threads and processes with
realtime scheduling priority.
See also
.Xr rtprio 1 .
.It Em idletime
Used by
.Xr mac_priority 4
to allow members of this group to run processes with idle scheduling
priority.
See also
.Xr idprio 1 .
.It Em bind
Used to be used as primary group for the
.Em bind
pseudo-user used by
.Xr named 8
Internet domain name server, which has been removed from the base system in
.Fx 10.0 .
.It Em unbound
Primary group for the
.Em unbound
pseudo-user used by the
.Xr local-unbound 8
recursive DNS resolver.
.It Em proxy
Primary group for the
.Em proxy
pseudo-user used by the
.Xr ftp-proxy 8
proxy daemon with packet filters such as
.Xr pf 4 .
.It Em authpf
Used by the set-group-id program
.Xr authpf 8
to configure authenticated gateways.
.It Em _pflogd
Primary group for the
.Em _pflogd
pseudo-user used by the
.Xr pflogd 8
log daemon with the
.Xr pf 4
packet filter.
.It Em _dhcp
Primary group for the
.Em _dhcp
pseudo-user used by the
.Xr dhclient 8
DHCP Client.
.It Em dialer
Users authorized to make outgoing modem calls (see
.Xr cu 1
and
.Pa /dev/cuauN
devices).
.It Em network
Historic group.
Unused in modern
.Fx .
.It Em audit
Primary group for the
.Em auditdistd
pseudo-user used by
.Xr auditd 8
and
.Xr auditdistd 8
audit daemons.
.It Em www
Historic group for accessing World Wide Web.
Unused in modern
.Fx .
.It Em u2f
Used for users who need to access
.Pa /dev/u2f/*
devices (see
.Xr u2f 4 ) .
.It Em ntpd
Primary group for the
.Em ntpd
pseudo-user used by the
.Xr ntpd 8
network time protocol daemon.
.It Em _ypldap
Primary group for the
.Em _ypldap
pseudo-user used by
.Xr ypldap 8
daemon.
.It Em hast
Primary group for the
.Em hast
pseudo-user used by
Highly Available Storage daemon
.Xr hastd 8 .
.It Em tests
Primary group for the
.Em tests
pseudo-user used by
automatic tests that request to run unprivileged.
See
.Xr tests 7 .
.It Em nogroup
Pseudo-group (fake group).
It differs from group
.Em nobody
in way that
.Em nogroup
doesn't have a dedicated user for it.
For instance, this group is used for users
.Em tty
and
.Em kmem .
.It Em nobody
Primary group for the traditional
.Em nobody
pseudo-user.
Modern practice is to assign to each different daemon its own separate
pseudo-user account and group so that if one daemon is compromised it
does not compromise all the other daemons.
.Pp
See also group
.Em nogroup .
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width "/usr/src/etc/group" -compact
.It Pa /etc/group
Main group permissions file.
.It Pa /usr/src/etc/group
Group permissions file for the base system.
.It Pa /usr/ports/GIDs
A list of GIDs (group IDs) reserved for ports (see
.Xr ports 7 ) .
.El
.Pp
See
.Xr group 5
for the format of abovementioned files.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr chgrp 1 ,
.Xr groups 1 ,
.Xr id 1 ,
.Xr newgrp 1 ,
.Xr group 5 ,
.Xr pw 8
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
manual page appeared in
.Nx 10.0
and
.Fx 15.1 .