On Tue, Mar 13, 2001 at 03:34:06PM +0100, Olaf Seibert wrote:
> 
> In v7, one user could be in any number of groups but only one at a time.
> There was a (presumably shell-builtin) command to switch to any group
> one belonged to (setgrp, I think). BSD introduced the feature of being
> in multiple groups at once, and the setgrp command disappeared.
> 
I think newgrp is still aliased to "exec newgrp" in the Korn shell.  I
did look for "newgrp" a short while back, but i can't remember if I
found it or not.

> Perhaps it is useful to revive the old idea for the time being but
> setting multiple groups at once. There is a setgroups(2) system call,
> but the caller needs to be root though. 
> 
It's a nuisance.  Like ACLs, the administration becomes a nightmare,
and only a clear representation (compare "ls -l" with WinNT's ACL
administration and their "properties/Security" display) will make a
different scheme acceptable.  It just seems to have too many dimensions.

++L