GROUPS(7)

📦 version 15.1, in freebsd 15.1

💅 groups(7) — the standard group names, explained by your fav Unix bestie

okay so before we even start — this is the groups(7) page, from the Miscellaneous Information Manual section. It's basically the group chat roster of a standard FreeBSD install, and honestly? It's giving lore. Some of these groups are thriving, some are retired icons living in the archives. Let's get into it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

groups — the standard group names, bestie. That's it. That's the whole name. Slay.

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

A standard FreeBSD installation ships with the following user group names. Think of it as the seating chart at the world's most locked-down lunch table 🍓

  • wheel — the VIP section 👑. These users are authorized to elevate themselves to the super-user privileges of the root user, meaning uid 0. Normally the wheel group has gid 0.

And lowkey important: users who are not in the group wheel are never allowed by su(1) to gain root privileges. Not ever. Not even if they ask nicely.

  • daemon — used by the set-group-id programs lpr(1) and rwho(1).
  • kmem — used by the set-group-id programs (like ktrdump(8)) that need to access kernel memory. Fun fact: /dev/mem and /dev/kmem are in the group kmem. See mem(4).
  • sys — historic group. Unused in modern FreeBSD. She's a legacy icon, we still love her 💀
  • tty — used by the set-group-id programs wall(1) and write(1) so users can send messages to another tty even if they don't own it. (The static tty device nodes /dev/pts/* are all in the group tty.) See tty(4).
  • operator — users authorized to take backups of disk devices and shut down the machine. Main character energy fr.

The disk device nodes (such as /dev/ada0) are in the group operator and are group-readable, so users in the group can read from disk devices — for example with dump(8). The tape device nodes (such as /dev/sa0) are in the group operator and are both group-readable and group-writable, so users in the group can write to tape devices.

Also: the shutdown(8) program is executable only by root and members of the operator group. So that's the whole vibe check on who can yeet the machine.

  • mail — used by mail agents (like dma(8)).

By default, root mail (/var/mail/root) is in the mail group.

  • bin — historic group. Unused in modern FreeBSD.
  • news — historic group. Unused in modern FreeBSD. (rip usenet 🕯️)
  • man — historic group; used to be used for managing manual pages (see man(1)). The way she used to run the docs and now the docs run themselves 😭
  • games — used by various set-group-id games to maintain high-score files and other common files in /var/games. Members of this group are also allowed to access /dev/input/event* device nodes (see hgame(4)). See also intro(6). Gamer rights 🎮✨
  • ftp — used to be used by sysinstall(8) (which is now replaced with bsdinstall(8)) for setting up anonymous FTP. Unused in modern FreeBSD.
  • staff — staff users, in contrast to guest users (see the guest group). Not used by FreeBSD; available for the administrator's interpretation. See security(7) for some recommendations on managing accounts in the staff group.
  • sshd — primary group for the sshd pseudo-user, used by the sshd(8) secure shell daemon.
  • smmsp — primary group for user smmsp, which is used by sendmail(8) if no non-root users were configured for running it.

And the name means "SendMail Message Submission Program". iykyk 💌

  • mailnull — used by electronic mail transport agent sendmail(8) as the group for its default user mailnull.
  • guest — guest users, in contrast to staff users (see the staff group). Not used by FreeBSD; available for the administrator's interpretation.
  • video — used for access to /dev/drm/* devices, which are used for GPU hardware acceleration. See drm(7). Your frames are literally being rendered by this group, respect her 🦋
  • realtime — used by mac_priotiry(4) to allow members of this group to run threads and processes with realtime scheduling priority. See also rtprio(1). (Yes, that spelling is exactly what the page says — copy-paste her exactly, no cap.)
  • idletime — used by mac_priority(4) to allow members of this group to run processes with idle scheduling priority. See also idprio(1).
  • bind — used to be used as the primary group for the bind pseudo-user used by named(8) Internet domain name server, which has been removed from the base system in FreeBSD 10.0. Gone but not forgotten 💐
  • unbound — primary group for the unbound pseudo-user used by the local-unbound(8) recursive DNS resolver.
  • proxy — primary group for the proxy pseudo-user used by the ftp-proxy(8) proxy daemon with packet filters such as pf(4).
  • authpf — used by the set-group-id program authpf(8) to configure authenticated gateways.
  • _pflogd — primary group for the _pflogd pseudo-user used by the pflogd(8) log daemon with the pf(4) packet filter. Note the leading underscore — she's a system gurl, hands off 🙈
  • _dhcp — primary group for the _dhcp pseudo-user used by the dhclient(8) DHCP Client.
  • dialer — users authorized to make outgoing modem calls (see cu(1) and /dev/cuauN devices). Retro tech, we stan 📞
  • network — historic group. Unused in modern FreeBSD.
  • audit — primary group for the auditdistd pseudo-user used by the auditd(8) and auditdistd(8) audit daemons.
  • www — historic group for accessing the World Wide Web. Unused in modern FreeBSD. The concept of the web outgrew the group, honestly iconic of her 🌈
  • u2f — used for users who need to access /dev/u2f/* devices (see u2f(4)).
  • ntpd — primary group for the ntpd pseudo-user used by the ntpd(8) network time protocol daemon.
  • _ypldap — primary group for the _ypldap pseudo-user used by the ypldap(8) daemon.
  • hast — primary group for the hast pseudo-user used by the Highly Available Storage daemon hastd(8).
  • tests — primary group for the tests pseudo-user used by automatic tests that request to run unprivileged. See tests(7).
  • nogroup — a pseudo-group (fake group 🎭). It differs from group nobody in that nogroup doesn't have a dedicated user for it. For instance, this group is used for users tty and kmem.
  • nobody — primary group for the traditional 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. (Isolation is self-care, periodt 💅)

See also group nogroup.

🎀 FILES 🎀

  • /etc/group — main group permissions file. The blueprint, the source of truth.
  • /usr/src/etc/group — group permissions file for the base system.
  • /usr/ports/GIDs — a list of GIDs (group IDs) reserved for ports (see ports(7)).

See group(5) for the format of the abovementioned files. 💖

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

chgrp(1), groups(1), id(1), newgrp(1), group(5), pw(8)

Go read the friends, bestie. They're all in the group chat 🫶

👑 HISTORY 👑

The groups manual page appeared in NetBSD 10.0 and FreeBSD 15.1. She's a cross-platform queen 🌍✨

kisses and good group hygiene 💜 — this page came to you courtesy of Debian, version dated April 19, 2026. that's the footer, bestie, I didn't forget it 🎀✨

📦 where this page comes from