User Account in Linux

Compiled by: Pallavi B. Vyas

 How Linux User Accounts Work
• Username
• Password

By default, all user home directories are
created and maintained in the /home
directory.

However, the root user’s home directory is
/root
 Purpose of managing different “User
Accounts”
Unix always supported the pool of multiple users
working independently and simultaneously on
the same computer.
• That only authorized users are able to access
system. (i.e. username and password)
• Each user is assigned a directory, calls home
directory ,for sorting the personal data .
• Access to resources like file and devices.
e.g.-any authorized user is able to read the
“message of the day”
 Super users and normal users
Many large systems make a distinction between an
SU and NU. Particularly user is prevented from
performing sensitive tasks, such as following,
unless the user has administrator privileges :
User account management
Periodic backup of data
Global maintantenance and upgrade of the
system
Global installation of applications, devices, and
their drivers
 Why we need to differentiate
SU and NU?
 The administrator account in RHL is called
root. The power of root is so extensive that
almost no task is forbidden for this account.
While its impossible for a normal user to
delete system files, root is able to delete them
all easily.
 for this reason, the root account should be
used with great care i.e. only by SU.
 RHM user and manager

• In system when you launch any RHL’s

graphical administration tools from a non-root
account, Linux will (if necessary)prompt you
to enter the password to the root account.
 Creating a group
• Group are useful when we need to treat a
number of different users the same way .for
example , if we want to grant a group of users
access to a particular file or directory, we add
the users to a group and grant the permission
to the group (instead of to the individual user
accounts).
 Creating a User Account

• Select Applications (the main menu on the

panel) => System Settings => Users & Groups
from the panel.
• You can also start the User Manager by typing
redhat-config-users at a shell prompt.
• If you are not logged in as root, you will be
prompted for your root password.
• The window shown in Figure will appear. Click
Add User.
• In the Create New User dialog box, enter a username
(this can be an abbreviation or nickname), the full
name of the user for whom this account is being
created, and a password (which you will enter a
second time for verification). The name of this user's
home directory and the name of the login shell should
appear by default. For most users, you can accept the
defaults for the other configuration options. Refer to
the Red Hat Enterprise Linux System Administration
Guide for details about additional options.
• Click OK. The new user will appear in the user list,
signaling that the user account creation is complete.
 User add
• When we run ‘useradd‘ command in Linux terminal, it performs following
major things:

1. It edits /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group and /etc/gshadow files for the newly
created User account.

2. Creates and populate a home directory for the new user.

3. Sets permissions and ownerships to home directory.

Command Syntax:
useradd [options] username

useradd [options] username

Passwd username
• Once a new user created, it’s entry automatically added to the ‘/etc/passwd‘ file. The file
is used to store users information and the entry should be.
• Username: User login name used to login into system. It should be between 1 to 32 charcters
long.
• Password: User password (or x character) stored in /etc/shadow file in encrypted format.
• User ID (UID): Every user must have a User ID (UID) User Identification Number. By default
UID 0 is reserved for root user and UID’s ranging from 1-99 are reserved for other predefined
accounts. Further UID’s ranging from 100-999 are reserved for system accounts and groups.
• Group ID (GID): The primary Group ID (GID) Group Identification Number stored in
/etc/group file.
• User Info: This field is optional and allow you to define extra information about the user. For
example, user full name. This field is filled by ‘finger’ command.
• Home Directory: The absolute location of user’s home directory.
• Shell: The absolute location of a user’s shell i.e. /bin/bash.
 Adding group
• groupadd [options] group

Remove group
groupdel group
 File structure of linux
FILE SYSTEMS
OPERATING SYSTEM
SUPPORTED
MS-DOS, Windows 95 FAT16
Windows 95 OSR2, 98,
FAT16, FAT32
Me
Windows NT, 2000, XP NTFS, FAT16, FAT32
Linux Ext2, FAT32, FAT16

File System Specs

FILE MAXIMUM FILE MAXIMUM MAXIMUM
SYSTEM NAME LENGTH VOLUME FILE SIZE
(CHARACTERS) SIZE
FAT16 8 2GB* 2GB
FAT32 255 2TB 4GB
NTFS 255 16TB 16TB
Ext2 255 4TB 2GB
*4GB under Windows NT
/bin : All the executable binary programs (file) required during booting,
repairing, files required to run into single-user-mode, and other important,
basic commands viz., cat, du, df, tar, rpm, wc, history, etc.
/boot : Holds important files during boot-up process, including Linux Kernel.
/dev : Contains device files for all the hardware devices on the machine
e.g., cdrom, cpu, etc
/etc : Contains Application’s configuration
files, startup, shutdown, start, stop script for every individual program.
/home : Home directory of the users. Every time a new user is created, a
directory in the name of user is created within home directory which
contains other directories like Desktop, Downloads, Documents, etc.
/lib : The Lib directory contains kernel modules and shared library images
required to boot the system and run commands in root file system.
/lost+found : This Directory is installed during installation of Linux, useful for
recovering files which may be broken due to unexpected shut-down.
/media : Temporary mount directory is created for removable devices
viz., media/cdrom.
/mnt : Temporary mount directory for mounting file system.
/opt : Optional is abbreviated as opt. Contains third party application
software. Viz., Java, etc.
 GNOME
• GNOME is an acronym for GNU Network
Object Model Environment. Its target
operating system is Linux.
• GNU-The most important part of an operating
system is the kernel. In a GNU/Linux system,
Linux is the kernel component. The rest of the
system consists of other programs, many of
which were written by or for the GNU
Project.st derivatives of BSD.