What am I missing to get the group management in the Wiki working?

[chrisanthropic]

Hi,
I've really been enjoying getting my aconfmgr config setup. I'm nearly done but have been struggling to get the group managment function in the wiki to work.

More specifically, I've added the helper script suggested in the User Management section of the wiki and am successfully managing my /etc/shadow and /etc/passwd fully with aconfmgr and that function! If I modify the example below, aconfmgr will pick up the change and want to apply it.

Working AddUser example:

AddUser rtkit '!*' 133 133 x 'RealtimeKit' /proc /usr/bin/nologin ''

However, any attempts at calling AddGroup seem to go ignored.

Failing AddGroup example:

AddGroup realtime x 967

Adding the above and running aconfmgr apply returns no changes, though when I check the /tmp/aconfmgr-$USERNAME/groups generated by the function, I can see a full copy of my existing /etc/groups and /etc/gshadow with the additional realtime group listed above added as expected.

I'd love to get my group management working alongside user management - can you help me figure out what I'm doing incorrectly?

NOTE: I've also had to add /etc/group and /etc/gpasswd and /etc/gshadow to my ingore list. Otherwise, aconfmgr will always attempt to copy it over, but the version it copies over doesn't include any changes reflected in the /tmp/aconfmgr-$USERNAME/groups .

[CyberShadow]

Sorry about that, looks like I forgot adding a helper when creating that page. Fixed that now:
https://github.com/CyberShadow/aconfmgr/wiki/User-management/_compare/7b5a5b15f2c1f4445353d23de71dedbade941847...f9839766e00144611df4af46edcf1db0d3217666

[chrisanthropic]

Thanks so much for the quick response and solution!

It's mostly working now, but it's creating duplicate entries in both /etc/group and /etc/gshadow. (It also completely ignores /etc/passwd, I'm not sure if that was intentional or not though since that file is largely unused.)

For example:

AddUser rtkit '!*' 133 133 x 'RealtimeKit' /proc /usr/bin/nologin ''
AddGroup rtkit x 133

Results in this entry in both /etc/group and /etc/gshadow:

rtkit:x:133:
rtkit:x:133:

And I see this happen for any group I create that also has a user of the same name.

[CyberShadow]

It's mostly working now, but it's creating duplicate entries in both /etc/group and /etc/gshadow.

Well, as the comment says, AddUser adds both the user and the corresponding group, as UNIX users generally always have an associated corresponding primary group. So, you don't need to call AddGroup, unless you're creating a group without an associated primary user (e.g. for special groups like audio or rfkill).

It also completely ignores /etc/passwd, I'm not sure if that was intentional or not though since that file is largely unused.

Not sure why you would see that, though worth noting that /etc/passwd and /etc/group are priority files, and are installed before any other changes if modified.

[chrisanthropic]

Ah, I see. I misunderstood. Thank you for the explanation and thanks again for the quick script update!

It also completely ignores /etc/passwd, I'm not sure if that was intentional or not though since that file is largely unused.
That was a typo, sorry. I meant it's ignoring /etc/gpaswd.

[CyberShadow]

Arch Linux does not have an /etc/gpasswd file. The group-equivalent file of /etc/passwd is /etc/group. Or are you thinking of /etc/gshadow?

[chrisanthropic]

I was comparing the aconfmgr output on a brand new install to a backup of my previous install which is quite a few years old and from a time when Arch apparently still did ship with using /etc/gpasswd.

Thanks again, apologies for the apparently unrelated questions.