sg (set group) before v4.0.4.1, in accordance with the specification, permitted a user named in /etc/group to set the account group without a password if no password was entered: For example: tty::5:sysop should permit sysop to "sg tty" without a password. Since sometime before shadow v4.0.4.1 sg has required a password in any case. If a valid MD5 of a password is entered, the password check fails. In other words, sg is useless. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Add a user to a group in /etc/group 2. Login as that user 3. Attempt to sg to that group Actual Results: In all cases, the response is "Password:" and entry of none (carriage return) if no password is in the /etc/group entry, or a valid password if there is a valid password entry (MD5) the response is "Sorry" Expected Results: It should have set the group to that specified in the command Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16 Portage 2.0.50-r8 (default-x86-2004.0, gcc-3.3.3, glibc-2.3.3.20040420-r0, 2.6.5-gentoo-r1) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.5-gentoo-r1 i586 Pentium MMX distcc 2.13 i386-pc-linux-gnu (protocols 1 and 2) (default port 3632) [disabled] ccache version 2.3 [enabled] Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59-r3 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=pentium-mmx -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe" CHOST="i386-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=pentium-mmx -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X alsa apm arts avi berkdb cjk crypt cups doc encode esd f77 foomaticdb gcj gdbm gif gnome gpm gtk gtk2 imlib java jpeg kde libg++ libwww mad mikmod motif mozilla mpeg ncurses oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl png postgres python qt quicktime readline sdl slang ssl svga tcltk tcpd truetype x86 xml2 xmms xv zlib"
Remove this as a bug. Users named as group members must be named in /etc/gshadow, not /etc/group