Jtdylktuy

I have 2 users, each has a different primary group.
For user1, the primary group is group1 with GID 501.
For user2, the primary group is group2 with GID 502.

I edited /etc/passwd manually so that user1 now has GID 600.
However, I forgot to create a new group with GID 600 (and I did not edit /etc/group either).

What's surprising me is that even though I never created a group with GID 600 (and thus there's no such group in /etc/group)- everything works as if such a group exists:

Examples:

1) After user1 creates a new file- test.txt- User2 can't r/w that file.

2) When running ls -l I can see that test.txt belongs to GID 600.

What am I missing? Why does it work even though there's inconsistency between /etc/passwd and /etc/group?

Thanks.

What's surprising me is that even though I never created a group with GID 600 (and thus there's no such group in /etc/group)- everything works as if such a group exists

Not quite everything: a user can only belong to such a nameless group if it is their primary group, i.e. the group ID is specified on their line in /etc/passwd. But that is just a consequence of how the non-primary group membership information is stored.

The kernel fundamentally handles the users and groups by UID and GID numbers; the names are essentially just a friendly user interface layer for us humans. POSIX-compliant filesystems also tend to store file ownerships by UID/GID numbers, not by user/group names.

Sometimes it is also necessary to work with incomplete user/group information. For example, a system that is relying on a central LDAP or NIS user database must not destroy file owner/group information merely because a network failure is causing the user information database to be unreachable.

Or when you are restoring a system after a total system disk failure, it would be inconvenient to have an absolute requirement to restore the user/group information first before anything else. (Granted, it might usually be one of the first things you restore, but it is not absolutely mandatory to do so.)

For a file to belong to a group (the group is a numerical value), this group doesn't need to exist locally.

THe best example to show this is a USB disk written on a system where GID 600 is locally defined and then moved to a system where it does not exist locally. The files will show up all right, with the numerical value 600 not being resolved to a group name.