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

D35 InfoLab21
Lancaster University
Lancaster, LA1 4WA
United Kingdom
 
July 2025
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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)
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