GROUPS(7) FreeBSD Miscellaneous Information Manual GROUPS(7)
NAME
groups - standard group names
DESCRIPTION
A standard FreeBSD installation has the following user group names:
wheel Users authorized to elevate themselves to the super-user
privileges of the root user, meaning uid 0. Normally the wheel
group has gid 0.
Users who are not in the group wheel are never allowed by su(1)
to gain root privileges.
daemon Used by the set-group-id programs lpr(1) and rwho(1).
kmem Used by the set-group-id programs (like ktrdump(8)) that need
to access kernel memory (/dev/mem and /dev/kmem are in the
group kmem). See mem(4).
sys Historic group. Unused in modern FreeBSD.
tty Used by the set-group-id programs wall(1) and write(1) to allow
users to send messages to another tty even if they don't own it
(static tty device nodes /dev/pts/* are all in the group tty).
See tty(4).
operator Users authorized to take backups of disk devices and shut down
the machine.
The disk device nodes (such as /dev/ada0) are in the group
operator and group-readable so users in the group can read from
disk devices, for example with dump(8). The tape device nodes
(such as /dev/sa0) are in the group operator and are both
group-readable and group-writable so users in the group can
write to tape devices.
The shutdown(8) program is executable only by root and members
of the operator group.
mail Used by mail agents (like dma(8)).
By default, root mail (/var/mail/root) is in the mail group.
bin Historic group. Unused in modern FreeBSD.
news Historic group. Unused in modern FreeBSD.
man Historic group; used to be used for managing manual pages (see
man(1)).
games Used by various set-group-id games to maintain high-scores
files and other common files in /var/games. The members of
this group are also allowed to access /dev/input/event* device
nodes (see hgame(4)). See also intro(6).
ftp Used to be used by sysinstall(8) (which is now replaced with
bsdinstall(8)) for setting up anonymous FTP. Unused in modern
FreeBSD.
staff Staff users, in contrast to guest users (see guest group). Not
used by FreeBSD; available for the administrator's
interpretation. See security(7) for some recommendations on
managing accounts in staff group.
sshd Primary group for the sshd pseudo-user used by the sshd(8)
secure shell daemon.
smmsp Primary group for user smmsp, which is used by sendmail(8) if
no non-root users were configured for running it.
The name of the group means "SendMail Message Submission
Program".
mailnull Used by electronic mail transport agent sendmail(8) as group
for its default user mailnull.
guest Guest users, in contrast to staff users (see staff group). Not
used by FreeBSD; available for the administrator's
interpretation.
audio Used to access virtual_oss(8) loopback devices.
video Used for access to /dev/drm/* devices, which are used for GPU
hardware acceleration. See drm(7).
realtime Used by mac_priotiry(4) to allow members of this group to run
threads and processes with realtime scheduling priority. See
also rtprio(1).
idletime Used by mac_priority(4) to allow members of this group to run
processes with idle scheduling priority. See also idprio(1).
bind Used to be used as primary group for the bind pseudo-user used
by named(8) Internet domain name server, which has been removed
from the base system in FreeBSD 10.0.
unbound Primary group for the unbound pseudo-user used by the
local-unbound(8) recursive DNS resolver.
proxy Primary group for the proxy pseudo-user used by the
ftp-proxy(8) proxy daemon with packet filters such as pf(4).
authpf Used by the set-group-id program authpf(8) to configure
authenticated gateways.
_pflogd Primary group for the _pflogd pseudo-user used by the pflogd(8)
log daemon with the pf(4) packet filter.
_dhcp Primary group for the _dhcp pseudo-user used by the dhclient(8)
DHCP Client.
dialer Users authorized to make outgoing modem calls (see cu(1) and
/dev/cuauN devices).
network Historic group. Unused in modern FreeBSD.
audit Primary group for the auditdistd pseudo-user used by auditd(8)
and auditdistd(8) audit daemons.
www Historic group for accessing World Wide Web. Unused in modern
FreeBSD.
u2f Used for users who need to access /dev/u2f/* devices (see
u2f(4)).
ntpd Primary group for the ntpd pseudo-user used by the ntpd(8)
network time protocol daemon.
_ypldap Primary group for the _ypldap pseudo-user used by ypldap(8)
daemon.
hast Primary group for the hast pseudo-user used by Highly Available
Storage daemon hastd(8).
tests Primary group for the tests pseudo-user used by automatic tests
that request to run unprivileged. See tests(7).
nogroup Pseudo-group (fake group). It differs from group nobody in way
that nogroup doesn't have a dedicated user for it. For
instance, this group is used for users tty and kmem.
nobody Primary group for the traditional nobody pseudo-user. Modern
practice is to assign to each different daemon its own separate
pseudo-user account and group so that if one daemon is
compromised it does not compromise all the other daemons.
See also group nogroup.
FILES
/etc/group Main group permissions file.
/usr/src/etc/group Group permissions file for the base system.
/usr/ports/GIDs A list of GIDs (group IDs) reserved for ports (see
ports(7)).
See group(5) for the format of abovementioned files.
SEE ALSO
chgrp(1), groups(1), id(1), newgrp(1), group(5), pw(8)
HISTORY
The groups manual page appeared in NetBSD 10.0 and FreeBSD 15.1.
FreeBSD 15.1-STABLE-HBSD May 21, 2026 GROUPS(7)