Gpasswd (Add and Delete Users to Group)

The gpasswd (Group PASSWorD) command is often used to manage group members. With the -a option, you can add a user to a group. With the -d option, you can delete a user from a group. With the -M option, you can register all group members in a group.

Using this command with no option, you can also create a password for a group. As password creation isn’t a frequently used functionality of the command, you may find it easy to memorize with the fact that the gpasswd command was originally designed to manage the /etc/group file including group passwords.

Add a user to a group (-a option)

To add a user to a group, run the gpasswd -a [user name] [group name] command as the superuser. For example, to add user_a to a sudo group, run the command below. (You can get the same result as that of the usermod -aG command. You just need to be careful because the order of arguments is different).

gpasswd -a user_a sudo

To check the group status, run the groups command. You can see that user_a is now a member of the sudo group.

groups user_a

user_a : group_a sudo group_b group_c

Delete a user from a group (-d option)

To delete a user from a group, run the gpasswd -d [user name] [group name] command as the superuser. For example, to delete user_a from the sudo group, run the command below.

gpasswd -d user_a sudo

Removing user user_a from group sudo

To check the group status, run the groups command. You can see that user_a is no longer a member of the sudo group.

groups user_a

user_a : group_a group_b group_c