Adding user to a group

#1

Hello everyone,

i am new to silverblue and just trying to find my way around. Initially, I found my way around quite quickly but now i got stuck trying to add my user to a the docker group. Docker is up and running and its group shows up in /usr/lib/group.

I tried several approaches, but apparently it is not possible to edit /etc/group directly.

I tried the troubleshooting pages, but they seem to be a bit dated. To my understanding, silverblue is using systemd-sysusers.service now.

I really would appreciate help / guidance.

Thanks,
Sebastian

#2

Hi @devbeer, this should help you out. :slight_smile:

Managing Users and Groups

#3

@miker256 Thanks for the link. I had a look at this already. However, I am still unsure what I need to do or How this differs from the 2nd line I linked:

# grep -E '^libvirt:' /usr/lib/group >> /etc/group
# usermod -aG libvirt username

To be precise, the first line does not work, because I do not have permission to edit group - that is where my question considering systemd comes from.
The second line does not throw an error, but has also no effect.

#4

Are you issuing the commands as root?

Would be good to see the error you get.

#5

Ah thanks, a lot. I did a stupid mistake by doing sudo grep -E '^libvirt:' /usr/lib/group >> /etc/group and somehow did not get that this only runs the first part of the command as superuser. Therefore, I got a permission denied error. When running the command from a root shell, all worked fine.

1 Like
#6

To avoid a root shell, I like to use this construct:

$ grep -E '^libvirt:' /usr/lib/group | sudo tee -a /etc/group

described here: