Comment 2 for bug 238321

This was an upstream change, documented in the "Found and fixed bug in groups(1). Want the diff?" email thread on the coreutils mailing list. The email describing the change is in http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2006-09/msg00283.html, of which I pasted a piece below. The final decision will be from the Ubuntu package maintainers.

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Those changes to groups.sh change its behavior to make it more
compatible with FreeBSD and Solaris. The old behavior was:

  $ groups root
  root : root

and the new behavior is:

  $ groups root
  root

I think this change is a good one (as compatibility is good), but it
should be documented.

While we're in the neighborhood:

  * "groups" should print a diagnostic if there's a write error, rather
    than merely exiting with status 1.

  * groups should handle options like "--vers" and "--" compatibly
    with everyone else.

  * "id" should be invoked with "--" to protect user names beginning
    with "-".

Here's a proposed patch. Normally I'd just install this, but you're
about to release a new version so I am holding off.

2006-09-26 Paul Eggert <address@hidden>

        * NEWS: "groups user" no longer outputs "user :"; you need at least
        two users. "groups" now processes options like --help more compatibly.
        * doc/coreutils.texi (groups invocation): "groups" no longer prefixes
        the output with "user :" unless more than one user is specified.
        * src/groups.sh: Implement the option-processing change.
        Handle user and group names with special characters more robustly.
        Report write errors instead of exiting silently with status 1.

(...)
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