Dr Andrew Scott G7VAV
MBCS, MIET, Member ACM, Member IEEE
My photo
Senior Lecturer
School of Computing
    and Communications

D35 InfoLab21
Lancaster University
Lancaster, LA1 4WA
United Kingdom
 
November 2025
Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
27 28 29 30 31 1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16
17 18 19 20 21 22 23
24 25 26 27 28 29 30
1 2 3 4 5 6 7

SG

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 09/12/2012
Index Return to Main Contents
 

NAME

sg - execute command as different group ID  

SYNOPSIS

sg [-] [group [-c ] command]
 

DESCRIPTION

The sg command works similar to newgrp but accepts a command. The command will be executed with the /bin/sh shell. With most shells you may run sg from, you need to enclose multi-word commands in quotes. Another difference between newgrp and sg is that some shells treat newgrp specially, replacing themselves with a new instance of a shell that newgrp creates. This doesn't happen with sg, so upon exit from a sg command you are returned to your previous group ID.  

CONFIGURATION

The following configuration variables in /etc/login.defs change the behavior of this tool:

SYSLOG_SG_ENAB (boolean)

Enable "syslog" logging of sg activity.
 

FILES

/etc/passwd

User account information.

/etc/shadow

Secure user account information.

/etc/group

Group account information.

/etc/gshadow

Secure group account information.
 

SEE ALSO

id(1), login(1), newgrp(1), su(1), gpasswd(1), group(5), gshadow(5).

 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
CONFIGURATION
FILES
SEE ALSO
for client (none)
© Andrew Scott 2006 - 2025,
All Rights Reserved
http://www.andrew-scott.uk/
Andrew Scott
http://www.andrew-scott.co.uk/