User Account Management

User Account management

Traditionally, the /etc/passwd file is used to keep track of every registered user that has access to a system.

The /etc/passwd file is a colon-separated file that contains the following information:

• User name
• Encrypted password
• User ID number (UID)
• User's group ID number (GID)
• Full name of the user (GECOS)
• User home directory
• Login shell

• /etc/passwd is a text file that contains the attributes of (i.e., basic information about) each user or account on a computer running Linux or another Unix-like operating system. The permissions for /etc/passwd are by default set so that it is world readable, that is, so that it can be read by any user on the system 1.

As we mention before /etc/passwd file  is used to keep track of every user, but in this case they are talking about services: geo services, sound services, printer services etc..

The /etc/shadow file stores actual password in encrypted format (more like the hash of the password) for user’s account with additional properties related to user password. Basically, it stores secure user account information. All fields are separated by a colon (:) symbol. It contains one entry per line for each user listed in /etc/passwd file. You can see the example here

/etc/group is a text file which defines the groups to which users belong under Linux  operating system. Under Linux multiple users can be categorized into groups. Unix file system permissions are organized into three classes, user, group, and others. The use of groups allows additional abilities to be delegated in an organized fashion, such as access to disks, printers, and other peripherals. This method, amongst others, also enables the Superuser to delegate some administrative tasks to normal users.

ohhhvictor belongs to group id 126

now lets make it shorter and check what we could find with the command less  /etc/group

We will add the user Michael Jackson, and then we will verify the information

Now let's check our users

Now we will; check the rights of the users..and the user's group

We will learn how to lock and unlock an account 

Now we will unlock the account  and we will verify the information

 Deleting a user

We keep verifying information

We will check on the home directory this information

With the last command, we permanently delete the user mjackson.

In this lesson, we learned how to create, modify and delete users. If this was useful, please click like. Thank you in advance   😉