Anything related with user accounts and user management on Unix-like systems.
1
vote
4answers
53 views
What type of permissions should a user's home directory and files have?
I'm working with a fresh install of Ubuntu 12.04 and I've just added a new user:
useradd -m testuser
I thought that the -m flag to create a home directory for users was pretty standard, but now ...
3
votes
1answer
41 views
Trouble with dbus and systemd/user
I have systemd set up so that using systemctl start user@me will start my user services as I expect, but my dbus one just won't go (which I need for PulseAudio).
Is there some way I can check dbus or ...
0
votes
1answer
47 views
Should I use useradd or adduser?
I am trying to add a new user to the system. I am confused though which command to run: useradd or adduser?
2
votes
4answers
62 views
Open program as root, close root session but still program is running
When I run my backup script, first I switch to root, mount a truecrypt partition and then run the script.
I've noticed that after run truecrypt as root, I can exit the root session and truecrypt ...
3
votes
1answer
57 views
User systemd PulseAudio service
Not much else to this question: I would like to know what I need to create a PulseAudio systemd service to be run with systemd --user.
I've tried a few different things, including various user ...
2
votes
1answer
47 views
how to keep file owner same for newly created files
This question is regarding samba file access.
I have created a folder A, and under folder A created two folders B and C. And also created three users A, B and C.
User A has access to all three ...
2
votes
1answer
35 views
Adding a user to a group by default
I have a group that all users on the system share. The group name is common and it is to allow for a universal fileshare for everyone on the machine. How would I make it so that all new users are ...
4
votes
1answer
132 views
Which home directory should 'nobody' have?
I'm messing around with Tiger security audits on my CentOS box, ensuring the server is fit for being online, well as close as it can get anyway.
I noticed a warning about the user nobody having / as ...
1
vote
1answer
37 views
Username conflicts on a central printer queue
We have just switched to a centralized print queue. The printer is setup with
lpadmin -p SPScolour -E -D "Sustainable Print Colour" -v lpd://xxx.yyy.com/colour
The IT people are saying my local ...
1
vote
2answers
55 views
Changing username but not home directory
Is it a bad idea to do usermod -l login-name old-name to change my username while leaving my home directory name intact?
A few years ago my university changed my username, but since it didn't affect ...
-1
votes
4answers
54 views
How to list all daemon users?
A typical Linux system has not only accounts for the actual user(s) of the system, but also various system accounts.
Is there any file like /etc/passwd for daemons?
I heard that it is possible to ...
1
vote
1answer
25 views
How to open a program as another user inside a logged display?
I'm trying to open netbeans as a different user, but isn't working.
I'm running a Kubuntu 12.04 LTS with KDE.
And I tried the following:
Open a terminal, type su - myotheruser, type the myotheruser ...
1
vote
1answer
37 views
How to retrieve information about locked accounts
Is it possible to retrieve info regarding to locked unix accouts?
I am interested in seeing information about what date and time the lockout happend and from what hostname (pc name). I would like to ...
1
vote
1answer
49 views
Which user owns X display?
How to determine, as root, which user owns X display :0? (on a Fedora 18 system with defaults)
2
votes
1answer
82 views
bash script - supervisor program
I have to write a shell-script that have to do the following tasks:
-in every 5 seconds it saves:
-how many users are using joe and/or vi;
-if ...
2
votes
6answers
133 views
sort ls output by users
On Linux, is there a way to sort ls output by users? What I try to achieve is something like this:
user_a file1
user_a file2
user_b another_file
user_c this_file
user_c ...
3
votes
2answers
98 views
How to grant non-root user access to device files
I have device file that appears in /dev when a specific board is plugged in. The read and write operations to it work just fine, but in order to open the device file the program needs to be executed ...
1
vote
2answers
107 views
FreeBSD telnet does not take root login
I have just installed FreeBSD 8.1 as a VMWare host and can establish ipv4 connectivity to the instance and telnet through the virtual console. I have also uncommented the /etc/inetd.conf lines
telnet ...
2
votes
1answer
38 views
Unable to preserve ownership in a copy but able with a move?
I have noticed that I am unable to preserve ownership if I rsync -o files. However, I am when I move them. This is all without admin privileges. What is the rationale of this? Several threads e.g. ...
3
votes
2answers
67 views
Fully seperate two accounts without installing seperate operating systems?
Our class is finally installing Mint Linux on our machines. The problem is our teacher is scared that we'll play war games against the two classes that use the computers. His solution is to install ...
1
vote
2answers
68 views
How to switch back and forth between users quickly on a single terminal?
I'd like to switch to another user without logging out the first user, then log in as a third user without logging out the other two, and so on, then switch between all users quickly. I'd like to ...
3
votes
2answers
98 views
How to set permissions in /sys/ permanent?
I'm starting X as a user and need to set my keyboard brightness in /sys/class/leds/asus\:\:kbd_backlight/brightness. The /sys/ directory gets recreated after reboot, so the permissions will reset too. ...
1
vote
0answers
37 views
Create a browser only session (Ubuntu) [duplicate]
I was recently in a Virgin media shop and was interested to see that they had laptops running Ubuntu for customers to browse the web on. The setup itself was interesting and I'm wondering if anyone ...
1
vote
1answer
188 views
Why useradd shows Permission denied error
I am working on CentOS 5.5.
When I run the useradd command as root, then its working.
But when I run the same command from one of the user, then it shows
-bash: /usr/sbin/useradd: Permission ...
2
votes
1answer
80 views
Is running programs as another user useful?
After watching a talk by Douglas Crockford on security where he talks about how browsers got the right answer to the question "Who's interest does the program represent?", I wondered if it was ...
0
votes
1answer
76 views
Allow all group members to create directories and files
There are 2 users
sftp_user
apache
Both users belong to the updaters group as well as other groups.
New directories and files are created in the
/updates/ directory.
drwxrwsr-x 8 sftp updaters ...
1
vote
4answers
147 views
Changing user while scp
I need to copy file between Linux machines. The problem that the user I use to login (myuser), is different from the user that can access the file.
If I just ssh to the machine, I can switch the user ...
1
vote
2answers
49 views
understanding how to run script securely as limited user
I'm a long time dev but linux newbie. I've been building this (http://tryperl.com) to learn linux. So, my question is just about some *nix stuff I don't fully grok.
One of the things I want to do is ...
1
vote
3answers
200 views
Getting a list of users by grepping /etc/passwd
For a homework assignment, I need to use grep to parse /etc/passwd and get a list of all users (their usernames only, nothing else). It should use a pipe, and the results should end up in the allusers ...
0
votes
0answers
60 views
Creating a Safe Web Server
Web server hosts multiple websites. Multiple users update each website.
User home directory
/home/user1
/home/user2
Web directory
/var/www/site1
/var/www/site2
Each user uses SFTP to upload ...
3
votes
1answer
90 views
Is there a way to find out how many instances of the root user are logged into a Linux machine?
We have a handful of users that login to our Linux virtual machine as root either through the vSphere client or through SSH and I want to see if there is a way to tell if multiple root users are ...
0
votes
0answers
56 views
GUI user management software?
When I was using Fedora and derivatives, I remember using the system-manage-users GUI to change user settings such as adding a user to a group.
Right now I am trying Debian derivatives such as ...
2
votes
1answer
65 views
What is the source of truth for currently active tty/pts connections?
I'm looking for a simple way to determine the number of currently logged in users, using only the filesystem and basic bash functions (instead of using binaries).
The uptime binary appears to be ...
0
votes
0answers
70 views
Buildroot: Unknown own user
I crated an image with buildroot. Everything went smooth. When I untarred the bz2 image in vmware and tried to boot into it then I observed an issue, in which, system is unable to recognize any user, ...
3
votes
3answers
583 views
User-friendly command to list all users on Ubuntu system?
Is there a user-friendly command I can use to list users in a console on an Ubuntu system?
When I cat /etc/passwd I get a hard-to-read list of users. It would be nice to see an alphabetized list, ...
1
vote
1answer
442 views
Whoami: cannot find name for user id 0
When I run whoami it says:
whoami: cannot find name for user id 0
My /etc/passwd file looks like this:
root::0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
1
vote
1answer
36 views
Securely running LAMP under a specific user
I'm setting up a sandbox type of server that will be used by a couple users as a development environment and knowledge base. The server will have a web frontend so I've installed Apache, MySQL and ...
7
votes
1answer
214 views
How to stop users from Switching to Root user
I have disabled the root user login from Sshd.conf file so now no one can login using root user even if they know the password SOMEHOW.
Now I have 3 users in server ROOT,EMERG and ORACLE. I want to ...
0
votes
1answer
135 views
SSH minimal rights user - su only [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Creating a UNIX account which only executes one command
I am trying to setup a user account that only has as minimal rights as possible.
The user should be able to log ...
0
votes
1answer
63 views
Single-user binary installation location?
I'd like to install a binary for only my user, because I don't have root, and therefore don't have access to /usr/bin. I've tried ~/bin, and it can't find the binary. I'm on Mac OS 10.6.7. Is there ...
0
votes
0answers
65 views
How to switch user if the Screen is Lock
Sometime this happen that when I had to do something on server I find that the screen is lock and I dont know the password of that user to unlock it and switch the user.
So i need to know that How to ...
1
vote
3answers
246 views
Linux Kernel: uid and gid vs /etc/passwd
How does the Linux kernel deal with UIDs and GIDs?
When I want to add a user to a system, does the kernel require some type of "registration" for this user (syscall?)? Does the kernel even care about ...
0
votes
1answer
29 views
How to restore the user postgres?
In the second answer in this thread is a warning about changing the UNIX password for "postgres".
I have already changed the password for "postgres".
How could I restore the initially state of the ...
2
votes
2answers
34 views
Applying and linking all settings/binaries of one user to another user in Linux
In a linux machine, we may have to compile our programs with respect to that linux machine.
Now, if we already have some other users (not root. A typical user.) who have already compiled many ...
4
votes
2answers
80 views
Is it a good practice to have different users for different contexts?
I'm a software developer and I have a new laptop with Ubuntu.
I plan to set up this laptop as a development workstation where I'll do my professional work (for my company) and also I'll develop some ...
2
votes
1answer
89 views
Is it possible to log directly into chroot?
Lets say I boot up my computer and I see the login screen. When I log in as myuser, I want to be restricted to a certain root directory via. chroot.
Let's assume that the directory is ...
3
votes
1answer
248 views
Force the owner and group for the contents of a tar file?
I would like to create a tar file with contents belonging to an owner:group pair who do not exist on the system from which the file is being made.
Here's the direction I've tried:
tar ca ...
1
vote
2answers
177 views
How to check how many Oracle user sessions are running
I need to check how many users are connected to server for specific applications through a browser. I'm mainly interested in Oracle. My server runs RHEL.
1
vote
1answer
235 views
Trouble adding existing user to existing group in ubuntu
I was trying to add a user called bill to www group
useradd -G www bill
It gives me error
UX: useradd: ERROR: bill is already in use. Choose another.
I checked if this user already in the group ...
1
vote
1answer
103 views
security concern around adding cron user to web application group
I have a permissions issue on my CentOS 5.6 machine with regards to the cron user.
On my test/staging environment my cron user (picco-cron) is a member of one group - picco-cron, as below:
...
