Adding user to a third group seems to have removed him from one of the first two he was a member of???

I had user mlh in two groups: mlh and accounting.
mlh was the user's primary group. Then, I typed

usermod -G wheel mlh

with the intention of adding mlh to a third group
named wheel.

Now, if I type groups mlh, only wheel and mlh are
returned. The output from the groups command
suggests that mlh is only a member of two groups
now: wheel and mlh. Is that what happened? Did
I bump mlh from the accounting group by virtue of
having added him to wheel group this way?

>>>>> "MLH" == MLH <CRCI@NorthState.net> writes:

MLH> I had user mlh in two groups: mlh and accounting. mlh was the
MLH> user's primary group. Then, I typed

MLH> usermod -G wheel mlh

usermod *sets* the (supplementary) groups that a user is part of. It
does not *add* the group. In order to add to a group, you need to list
the new group, along with all existing groups. (mlh is not removed from
the mlh group because mlh is its initial group, which is set using -g.)

The easiest way to add a user to a group is to use the adduser program,
which is part of the adduser package.

adduser <user> <group>

will add the user <user> to the group <group>. (I like adduser for
creating user accounts too.)

--
Hubert Chan <hubert@uhoreg.ca> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
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OK. I see. That makes sense. Thank-you.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 23:09:19 -0500, Hubert Chan <hubert@uhoreg.ca>
wrote:

>>>>>> "MLH" == MLH <CRCI@NorthState.net> writes:
>
>MLH> I had user mlh in two groups: mlh and accounting. mlh was the
>MLH> user's primary group. Then, I typed
>
>MLH> usermod -G wheel mlh
>
>usermod *sets* the (supplementary) groups that a user is part of. It
>does not *add* the group. In order to add to a group, you need to list
>the new group, along with all existing groups. (mlh is not removed from
>the mlh group because mlh is its initial group, which is set using -g.)
>
>The easiest way to add a user to a group is to use the adduser program,
>which is part of the adduser package.
>
> adduser <user> <group>
>
>will add the user <user> to the group <group>. (I like adduser for
>creating user accounts too.)

>>>>> "Hubert" == Hubert Chan <hubert@uhoreg.ca> writes:

[...]

Hubert> The easiest way to add a user to a group is to use the adduser
Hubert> program, which is part of the adduser package.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[Head, meet palm] *smack* I thought I was reading a different newsgroup,
and so I was thinking Debian. The usage of the adduser program, and the
package that it's located in, may depend on your distribution. But it
may be worth checking out anyways.

--
Hubert Chan <hubert@uhoreg.ca> - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
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