adding users: own group or common group

[Blaqb0x]

Hi,

when I add a new email account. It automatically creates a user AND a group. Is that right? Isn't better practice to make them part of say, users group, or mailusers group?

thanx

[tolstoy]

I don't know how to answer this from a security perspective, as any group you create is only as secure your system's file permissions. From an purly administrative perspective, make common groups. 1) they are easier to work with. 2) if you don't, and have a couple hundred users, you'll end up having a couple hundred groups, all named after each user.

It seems that RH defaults to this activity of creating a group based upon the user's name. Personally I find it rather annoying.

[Feztaa]

It depends entirely on what you want to do.

If you're talking about actual users on the system, then they probably shouldn't be in the same group, unless they need to share files with each other (and not the entire world). If you're talking about mail users, who only access the system via smtp or pop3, I don't really see a problem with giving them the same group, since they don't really have or use home directories or shells on the system.