Ubuntu Server setup help [closed]

Question

I'm new to using ubuntu server. I have a VM running ubuntu server, and want to set it up so I can have other computers connect to it like businesses do. Can anyone guide me through this and teach me how to use this software?

Answer 1

As you have said that user creation is what your first task, let me copy paste my user-mgmt steps (These details are taken from the official ubuntu documentation only)

To add a user account, use the following syntax, and follow the prompts to give the account a password and identifiable characteristics such as a full name, phone number, etc.

sudo adduser username

To delete a user account and its primary group, use the following syntax:

sudo deluser username

To temporarily lock or unlock a user account, use the following syntax, respectively:

sudo passwd -l username
    sudo passwd -u username

To add or delete a personalized group, use the following syntax, respectively:

sudo addgroup groupname
    sudo delgroup groupname

To add a user to a group, use the following syntax: sudo adduser username groupname

To verify your current users home directory permissions, use the following syntax:

ls -ld /home/username

The following output shows that the directory /home/username has world readable permissions:

drwxr-xr-x 2 username username 4096 2007-10-02 20:03 username

You can remove the world readable permissions using the following syntax:

sudo chmod 0750 /home/username

A much more efficient approach to the matter would be to modify the adduser global default permissions when creating user home folders. Simply edit the file /etc/adduser.conf and modify the DIR_MODE variable to something appropriate, so that all new home directories will receive the correct permissions.

vi /etc/adduser.conf 

#and edit DIR_MODE to 
DIR_MODE=0750

Minimum Password Length: By default, Ubuntu requires a minimum password length of 6 characters, as well as some basic entropy checks. These values are controlled in the file /etc/pam.d/common-password, which is outlined below. password [success=2 default=ignore] pam_unix.so obscure sha512 If you would like to adjust the minimum length to 8 characters, change the appropriate variable to min=8. The modification is outlined below. password [success=2 default=ignore] pam_unix.so obscure sha512 min=8 Basic password entropy checks and minimum length rules do not apply to the administrator using sudo level commands to setup a new user.

Password Expiration When creating user accounts, you should make it a policy to have a minimum and maximum password age forcing users to change their passwords when they expire. To easily view the current status of a user account, use the following syntax:

sudo chage -l username

The output below shows interesting facts about the user account, namely that there are no policies applied: Last password change : Jan 20, 2008 Password expires : never Password inactive : never Account expires : never Minimum number of days between password change : 0 Maximum number of days between password change : 99999 Number of days of warning before password expires : 7

To set any of these values, simply use the following syntax, and follow the interactive prompts:

sudo chage username

The following is also an example of how you can manually change the explicit expiration date (- E) to 01/31/2008, minimum password age (-m) of 5 days, maximum password age (-M) of 90 days, inactivity period (-I) of 5 days after password expiration, and a warning time period (-W) of 14 days before password expiration.

sudo chage -E 01/31/2011 -m 5 -M 90 -I 30 -W 14 username

To verify changes, use the same syntax as mentioned previously:

sudo chage -l username

The output below shows the new policies that have been established for the account: Last password change : Jan 20, 2008 Password expires : Apr 19, 2008 Password inactive : May 19, 2008 Account expires : Jan 31, 2008 Minimum number of days between password change : 5 Maximum number of days between password change : 90 Number of days of warning before password expires : 14