Anything related with user accounts and user management on Unix-like systems.
1
vote
4answers
51 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 ...
5
votes
2answers
514 views
How to mass change password attributes in AIX uname -rv=3 5 for all users but root
I want to do a mass change on all users but root in AIX for the following "password attributes":
Weeks before password reuse: 15
Password min length: 6
Can it be done, or do I need to do them one ...
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 ...
3
votes
1answer
39 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 ...
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 ...
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
3k views
Changing user and group ID system wide (including file system attributes)?
(this question possibly related to Linux: simulating/masking user ownership upon mount of 'external' partitions? - Stack Overflow)
I typically use Ubuntu (currently 11.04) as my desktop OS; let's say ...
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. ...
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 ...
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
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:
...
-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
36 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
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 ...
6
votes
9answers
446 views
What is/are the standard CLI program(s) to manage users and groups?
As the title says, I'm basically asking about user management from the command line (e.g. on a system where there are no graphical tools available). In the past I've used several different programs to ...
15
votes
10answers
844 views
How to create strong passwords in Linux?
I wonder how I can create strong passwords on Linux (for both normal and admin users) and if there are specific programs to do that.
22
votes
3answers
23k views
How do I remove a user from a group?
Which command should I use to remove a user from a group in Debian?
When adding a user to a group, it can be done with:
usermod -a -G group user
However, I could not find a similar command ...
15
votes
5answers
6k views
How do you create a user with no password?
In os X it's possible to have users without passwords. If you inspect them with dscl their password show up as *. This is used for system users such as users for databases like mysql, pgsql etc. ...
2
votes
2answers
541 views
Limited SSH user on Ubuntu 12
I'm running Minecraft on a server. How can I give my friend SSH access just to the minecraft folder (a root folder), the screen command, and some ports?
2
votes
3answers
366 views
Another account with same uid as root gets prompted to set new password for root, not itself
After upgrading the os from 5300-06 to 5300-11, this weird behaviour happened.
My system had another unix account, let's call it "abc", purposely configured its uid to 0 for working as a root with ...
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 ...
3
votes
2answers
127 views
What is the proper solution to a web server trying to write to a directory?
So, I have a box with a "deploy" user. This deploy user owns a code repository and wordpress is running on this box...
When wordpress attempts to do something like upload a plugin, it is using the ...
5
votes
2answers
209 views
How do I add network or user source connection data to history entries?
I would like to modify the history settings for all users on the systems that I manage.
I would like it to contain the information from the connecting terminal like from who
sysadmin:/ # who
sysadmin ...
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 ...
0
votes
3answers
4k views
How can I list all user names on Solaris 10?
I forgot a user that I created on solaris 10, so now I would like to list all user names on my server.
Is it possible (I am root user)? What command I should use if possible?
Somewhere on the net ...
3
votes
2answers
96 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
106 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 ...
8
votes
2answers
12k views
How can I change a user's default group in Linux?
Being new to Linux administration, I'm a little confused about the following commands:
useradd
usermod
groupadd
groupmod
I've just finished reading the user administration book in the Linux/Unix ...
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. ...
3
votes
4answers
5k views
Can a linux user change their password without knowing the current password?
I'm setting up a few ubuntu boxes, and using opscode's chef as a configuration tool. It would be fairly easy to install public keys for each user on each of these servers, and disable password ...
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
187 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 ...
5
votes
2answers
9k views
User's Login date and login time
I want to fetch user's login time and login date, is there any command in Unix providing User's login date and User's login time ? this problem i want to perform in Shell-script where username is ...
2
votes
3answers
2k views
Why is file ownership inconsistent between two systems mounting the same NFS share?
I have one IBM AIX server (serverA) which is connected to the san storage. I have created a volume group and also file system (jfs2) and mounted to directory /profit.
After that I created a NFS ...
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 ...
5
votes
4answers
10k views
How can I create and grant a normal user with root privileges?
I'm wondering how to create and grant a normal user (for example, named 'sybase') with root privileges?
I found useradd, adduser, and passwd to be useful, but are there any other files to modify to ...
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
3answers
199 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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
1
vote
5answers
735 views
Hiding User from Last Command
Is there any way to hide a particular user's login entry from other users who run the last command?
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 ...
2
votes
1answer
109 views
How do I stop Apache from running as root?
New on the job, small place, and the security stuff just landed on my desk. I was hired to be a front-end developer. Happy to learn new things, but never had to do sysadmin stuff before.
I started ...
