19. Managing group directories

The autogroup module is used for creating group directories on demand for common group access. It can be used with Samba, for example, to dynamically create shared directories for a group of people.

	Check
	The autogroup module checks for the requested directory in valid groups from the system group database.

	Using autogroup for the creation of home directories
	The autogroup module can be used to create home directories as well, provided that user private groups exist for each user. This way all group and home directories can be created in one place with one module. However, no skeleton files will be copied and the autogroup suboption nopriv should not be used.

The autogroup configuration is the same as the autohome module, but unlike autohome, the virtual base directory can be placed anywhere and any name can be given to it. It is not dictated by system accounts.

The module autogroup can be used with Autodir using the -m option. For example, -m /usr/lib/autodir/autogroup.so.

All suboptions explained in managing home directories are the same for autogroup, except skel and noskel, as these are meaningless for the autogroup module. Additionally, there are other suboptions specific to autogroup. These are given below.