sftpgo/docs/groups.md

Groups

Using groups simplifies the administration of multiple accounts by letting you assign settings once to a group, instead of multiple times to each individual user.

SFTPGo supports the following types of groups:

• primary groups
• secondary groups
• membership groups

A user can be a member of a primary group and many secondary and membership groups. Depending on the group type, the settings are inherited differently.

⚠️ SFTPGo groups are completely unrelated to system groups. Therefore, it is not necessary to add Linux/Windows groups to use SFTPGo groups.

The following settings are inherited from the primary group:

• home dir, if set for the group will replace the one defined for the user. The %username% placeholder is replaced with the username
• filesystem config, if the provider set for the group is different from the "local provider" will replace the one defined for the user. The %username% placeholder is replaced with the username within the defined "prefix", for any vfs, and the "username" for the SFTP filesystem config
• max sessions, quota size/files, upload/download bandwidth, upload/download/total data transfer, max upload size, external auth cache time, ftp_security, default share expiration, password expiration, password strength: if they are set to 0 for the user they are replaced with the value set for the group, if different from 0. The password strength defined at group level is only enforce when users change their password
• expires_in, if defined and the user does not have an expiration date set, defines the expiration of the account in number of days from the creation date
• TLS username, check password hook disabled, pre-login hook disabled, external auth hook disabled, filesystem checks disabled, allow API key authentication, anonymous user: if they are not set for the user they are replaced with the value set for the group
• starting directory, if the user does not have a starting directory set, the value set for the group is used, if any. The %username% placeholder is replaced with the username

The following settings are inherited from the primary and secondary groups:

• virtual folders, file patterns, permissions: they are added to the user configuration if the user does not already have a setting for the configured path. The / path is ignored for secondary groups. The %username% placeholder is replaced with the username within the virtual path, the defined "prefix", for any vfs, and the "username" for the SFTP and HTTP filesystem config
• per-source bandwidth limits
• per-source data transfer limits
• allowed/denied IPs
• denied login methods and protocols
• two factor auth protocols
• web client/REST API permissions

The settings from the primary group are always merged first. no setting is inherited from "membership" groups.

The final settings are a combination of the user settings and the group ones. For example you can define the following groups:

• "group1", it has a virtual directory to mount on /vdir1
• "group2", it has a virtual directory to mount on /vdir2
• "group3", it has a virtual directory to mount on /vdir3

If you define users with a virtual directory to mount on /vdir and make them member of all the above groups, they will have virtual directories mounted on /vdir, /vdir1, /vdir2, /vdir3. If users already have a virtual directory to mount on /vdir1, the group's one will be ignored.

Please note that if the same virtual path is set in more than one secondary group the behavior is undefined. For example if a user is a member of two secondary groups and each secondary group defines a virtual folder to mount on the /vdir2 path, the virtual folder mounted on /vdir2 may change with every login.