User and Group Management

If you administer Linux servers, the users of such servers can be both your greatest asset and your greatest headache. Throughout the course of your career, you will be responsible for the addition of a large number of new users, the management of their passwords, the deletion of their accounts when they leave the organization, and the provision and revocation of access to resources located across the network. Even on servers where you are the sole user, you will still be responsible for managing user accounts. This is because even system processes run under the guise of a user. If you want to be effective at managing Linux servers, you will also need to know how to manage rights, implement password policies, and limit the number of people who can execute administrative commands on the computer. In this chapter, we’ll go over these topics in detail so that you have a solid understanding of how to manage users and the resources they consume.

In this...