Question

R creates a group called staff and I want to be able to update packages without starting R as sudo. So I added myself to staff using:

sudo usermod -G adm,dialout,cdrom,plugdev,lpadmin,admin,sambashare,staff matt

(side question is there a way to add yourself to a group without listing every other group you’re a member of?)

If i check /etc/groups i see

staff:x:50:matt

and the same for /etc/shadow

staff:*::matt

however if i run groups or id i’m not a member of staff. Also, I can’t make changes to anything in /usr/local/lib/R.

Answer 1

Did you log the “matt” account out and back in after running the sudo usermod command? Changes to the groups a user is in under unix only take affect at login time.