Adding Users

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Del curso dictado por University of Colorado System

Linux Server Management and Security

86 calificaciones

University of Colorado System

Linux Server Management and Security

86 calificaciones

Curso 3 de 4 en SpecializationComputer Security and Systems Management

Whether you are accessing a bank website, Netflix or your home router, chances are that your computer is interacting with a Linux system. The world runs on Linux. In this course, we will dive into how Linux works from an enterprise perspective. In week 1 we will look at what Linux is used for in the enterprise. By the end of week 1, you will be able to differentiate between different versions of Linux and understand how they are used in an enterprise environment. In week 2, we will explore how Linux systems are configured. By the end of week 2, you will be able to demonstrate different Linux commands and how they are used. You will also be able to interact with a Linux system. In week 3, we will explore Linux authentication mechanisms and how to add users and user controls to a Linux system. By the end of week 3, you should be able to demonstrate how to appropriately add users to a Linux machine and secure them. In week 4, we will explore how to harden a Linux system. By the end of week 4, you should be able to classify different technologies to secure Linux and differentiate access control methods for Linux applications.

De la lección

Users, authentication, and authorization in a Linux environment

This module describes the essentials of managing users in the enterprise.

Adding Users5:41

Securing Users9:05

Access Control10:15

Working with other systems9:51

Conoce a los instructores

Greg Williams
Lecturer
Department of Computer Science

In this lesson, I'll discuss adding users to Linux.

Adding users to Linux is a common task that system administrators

may perform over the course of managing a Linux system.

Now, depending on what scripts that you might have implemented on,

let's say a kickstart file, for example.

The integration that we have with maybe another directory,

like Active Directory, may do some of these tasks for you,

but let's go over them individually.

So I'll discuss the commands that we use to enter in users into Linux,

and some of the caveats that we have as well,

and what I've seen over the years.

Now, most Linux systems use a command called user add.

Now, if I type in sudo useradd and then the account that I want to create,

it's going to create not only the home directory,

but it's going to create the permissions for that home directory,

and also the shell that the user is going to have as well.

So I'm just going to enter this here,

and enter my password for Greg,

and now the account is created.

I can check that the account is created by doing one or two things.

Since I'm already in the home directory,

I can just list what files I have.

So here's my account gwilliams,

and gwilliams is the user and the group owners of that directory.

Additionally, I can go into the add see

password file and look to see if the account was created there.

But before I do that,

let's add a password for my gwilliams account.

So I'm going to type in sudo passwd gwilliams,

hit enter and in our password retype the password,

and it's created the password successfully.

So let's look at the etc password file for a minute.

Here we'll notice that we have three different users.

I've greg, greg test and gwilliams.

The X indicates that I've set a password for that user.

I have a user ID,

as well as my home directory,

and the shell that that user has.

Since some of the scripts,

because different distributions use user add in different ways,

let's look at a more mainstream Linux distribution such

as CentOS which is the binary equivalent of Redhat.

Typically, we're going to see this distribution

being used to worn in enterprise environment.

So let's get more familiar with what we can change for the defaults.

So I'll type in sudo vi /etc/default/useradd.

So here, I can change the group,

I can change the home directory, inactive,

I can make it active,

when the account expires in the shell and create mail spooler.

I can change or I can add several other attributes, if I would like.

But these are the most common that I'm going to use.

Now, let's go back into the /etc/ password field.

On many of these we notice that there is a shell called /sbin/nologin.

This means that we're going to use an account which is basically

a service account that allows us just to use the service and execute commands,

but it doesn't allow the user that we create to log in anywhere.

If we want to lock a user out,

this is the quickest way to lock somebody out of their account.

This would be in the cases,

if we wanted to,

if somebody was leaving the organization.

So in conclusion, adding new users is a very easy process.

We need to understand how we create users,

in what fields that we need to enter to make

sure that we're setting permissions correctly,

and that the user has a good experience when they log in.

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