newgrp command missing from Apple's implementation of x11

newgrp command is present and works as expected on all my machines.

Message was edited by: V.K.

Challenger14 wrote:
Hi,

Please excuse me if I've sent this to the wrong forum. I'm new to the Apple discussion groups.

Welcome to Apple Discussions:

Yes, our Unix forum is carefully and well hidden 🙂
Here's the link to said forum:
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=735

It seems as if Apple has left the newgrp command out of their x11 implementation (this is not specific to hardware and I've seen this in both Tiger & Leopard). I have several groups established on my Macbook Pro and need to changed between them in my shell. Can someone tell me how to do this?

I don't usually use X11, but I do use the terminal a lot, and I just checked -
newgrp
works in both X11 and terminal
Have you tried
man newgrp
??

it's in /user/bin on my computer. I can't tell you anything more than that. I never use this command but when I tried it worked both from x11 and from terminal.
$ which newgrp
/usr/bin/newgrp

Interestingly the command by itself in a terminal changes the prompt to
bash-3.2$
In X11, since the prompt is already that, there is no change.
However, entering
exit
in either X11 or terminal does not exit the original shell, so it's working properly.
In terminal, I get the original prompt when I enter exit.

A couple of things.

newgrp is a built-in for tcsh

If *which newgrp* is not finding newgrp, then you should check to see if it is in /usr/bin/newgrp

ls -l /usr/bin/newgrp

If the command is there, then you want to check if /usr/bin is in your PATH environment variable:

echo $PATH

Challenger14 wrote:
There is no man for newgrp (I'm using tcsh) and there is no newgrp in /usr/bin. I've tried this from both an x11 window and the mac terminal window. Apple says that don't support it. How did you get it on your system?

Although I upgraded this Leopard from Tiger, that does not explain it because in my man1 directory I only have the new (April 8, 2008) Leopard version newgrp.1.gz
It would appear that newgrp is a Leopard addition.

Your profile indicates you are running an earlier version of Leopard. Since my man page is dated April 8, 2008, that might explain it. It was either added or at least updated with one of the updates.

Message was edited by: nerowolfe

Challenger14 wrote:
Have you upgraded the operating system in any way since you bought the computer? Apple tells me that this "command" is not part of their standard distro.

I wonder if it is part of the XCode tools package?

you just talked to some incompetent apple reps. nothing unusual about that. no, i didn't do anything to my system. also as i said, it works on all 3 of my computers. it also works for everybody else in this thread except you. It's obvious that the problem is with your install. if you do an archive and install I'm sure you'll get that command. or you can try to get just the newgrp command from the install DVd using Pacifist
http://www.charlessoft.com/

P.S. I just looked through the install DVD using pacifist and found the command. it's there as I said.

Message was edited by: V.K.

Challenger14 wrote:
Interesting. I just bought my imac 2 weeks ago and apple didn't have the latest verion of Leopard on it! I'll have to upgrade it. My laptop is running tiger and the command isn't there either.

As I noted, there is not Tiger man page. The Leopard updater for the default Tiger install did not remove the old Tiger man pages, so that's how I know it was not in Tiger.
I believe that the shipping version of Leopard on a new computer is the same as the latest DVD, which is 10.5.4.
No guarantee 10.5.6 will add the missing file though. It's entirely possible that Apple removed it and what I have is the legacy file.
And again, it might be part of the XCode Developer package, but there is no question that I have it, as do others.
Interesting, to say the least.

I just looked in my Tiger clone directory and it's not there.

Message was edited by: nerowolfe

I just checked and the Mac OS X tcsh does not have the newgrp compiled as builtin.

tcsh --version
tcsh 6.14.00 (Astron) 2005-03-25 (i386-apple-darwin) options wide,nls,dl,al,kan,sm,rh,color,filec