macOS Terminal – Purpose of Unix Groups Explained

macosterminal

I see the following groups on my user id when working in terminal:

$ id | tr ',' '\n' | grep apple
702(com.apple.sharepoint.group.2)
701(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1)
395(com.apple.access_ftp)
398(com.apple.access_screensharing)

What is the purpose of these groups?

Best Answer

com.apple.sharepoint.group.1

com.apple.sharepoint.group.2

Directory Services. These groups for for the permissions of sharepoints (not to be confused with Microsoft SharePoint); shared folders, volumes, drives, etc.

com.apple.access_ftp

FTP file sharing. This defines the access rights/permissions for FTP (File Transfer Protocol). It a long since deprecated protocol/service and you should be using scp instead.

com.apple.access_screensharing

Remote Screen Sharing. This defines the access rights/permissions for screen sharing (or "remote control")

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