What is the group id of this group name?
Use the getent
command for processing groups and user information, instead of manually reading /etc/passwd
, /etc/groups
etc. The system itself uses /etc/nsswitch.conf
to decide where it gets its information from, and settings in the files may be overridden by other sources. getent
obeys this configuration. getent
prints data, no matter the source, in the same format as the files, so you can then parse the output the same way you would parse /etc/passwd
:
getent group sudo | awk -F: '{printf "Group %s with GID=%d\n", $1, $3}'
Note that, for a username, this much more easier. Use id
:
$ id -u lightdm
105
This can be simply done with cut
:
$ cut -d: -f3 < <(getent group sudo)
27
getent group sudo
will get the line regarding sudo
group from /etc/group
file :
$ getent group sudo
sudo:x:27:foobar
Then we can just take the third field delimited by :
.
If you want the output string accordingly, use command substitution within echo
:
$ echo "Group sudo with GID="$(cut -d: -f3 < <(getent group sudo))""
Group sudo with GID=27
A hack for the needed: (still maybe there is much better answer)
awk -F\: '{print "Group " $1 " with GID=" $3}' /etc/group | grep "group-name"
Simpler version(Thanks to @A.B):
awk -F\: '/sudo/ {print "Group " $1 " with GID=" $3}' /etc/group
Example:
$ awk -F\: '{print "Group " $1 " with GID=" $3}' /etc/group | grep sudo
Group sudo with GID=27