On Fri, Jan 28, 2022 at 11:29:49AM +0100, Markus Hiereth wrote: > Package: passwd > Version: 1:4.8.1-1 > Severity: normal > > Dear Maintainer, > > > * What led up to the situation? > > Checks made for translation of man 8 groupmems > > * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or > ineffective)? > > Try to invoke groupmems as user and as systemadministrator > > * What was the outcome of this action? > > groupmems asked in both cases for authentification by a password, but does > not specify which password is expected. There are three possibilies > a) root password from root (however, this does not make much sense) > b) user password for group-owning user (however, this does not make much > sense) > c) the group's password > > In all cases, I got a PAM authentification failure > > * What outcome did you expect instead? > > A snippet from the logfile is attached > > Best regards > Markus
This is not a well understood - or well documented - command. In order for unprivileged users to use groupmems, you must make it setuid-root: 'chmod u+s /usr/sbin/groupmems'. After I do this, I as user serge in group serge can do groupmems -a testuser to add user testuser to my group serge. I do have to provide my own password. -serge