Questions tagged [users]
For questions related to users, user accounts, user permissions or guest accounts.
269
questions
73
votes
6
answers
217k
views
Move home folder to second drive
I have 2 HDD drives in my computer. At the moment second drive is mounted as /media/storage.
How can I move my user data from /home to /media/storage/home?
Can I just move the data over there and ...
162
votes
5
answers
1.1m
views
How to enable root login?
I would like to enable the root account on my Ubuntu installation.
I realize the security implications of this.
222
votes
22
answers
167k
views
Why is it bad to log in as root?
I've often come across posts on forums or other websites where you see people joking in such a manner about running/logging in as root as if it's something awful and everyone ought to know about it. ...
98
votes
5
answers
431k
views
How to manage users and groups using GUI?
Just switched from 10.04 to 11.10. I'm wondering about the limited options in the GUI for managing users and groups. Where is the old GUI to change groups, id's, etc. I know that I can do this from ...
850
votes
8
answers
1.5m
views
How to add existing user to an existing group?
I want to add the Apache user (www-data) to the audio group. I've read the man page for useradd, but I'm not having any luck. I'm running xubuntu 11.10. Here's what I'm doing:
$ sudo useradd -G audio ...
249
votes
12
answers
1.7m
views
How do I kill processes in Ubuntu?
How do I kill all processes running by my own non-root account?
I have some spinning smbd processes that I caused from my windows machine and so I telnetted into the linux server and I want to kill ...
42
votes
4
answers
78k
views
Simple & easy way to jail users
I need a simple and easy way to jail users in their home directories in Oneiric. Do you have a simple configuration for jailing users, with full help, or some good web links?
I would be offering an ...
129
votes
6
answers
547k
views
Can I set my user account to have no password?
If I attempt to change my password to nothing by opening "User Accounts", the "Change" button remains greyed out:
How do I change my password to be empty? I know you can set Ubuntu to automatically ...
49
votes
6
answers
191k
views
Change owner of internal hard drive partition from root to user
I have a number of drives internal and external. Some are partitioned. Most mount automatically at boot (all did at one point).
One partition is owned by root and therefore does not mount ...
44
votes
5
answers
49k
views
How to NOT become a root user? Are administrators root?
I installed Ubuntu on my PC. To log in, I use the username and password I created during installation. Does this mean I am a root user? If yes, then how do I become non-root? It looks like non-root ...
56
votes
7
answers
46k
views
Why can other users see the files in my home folder?
I just added a new, underprivileged "desktop user," and I was surprised to discover that it can see the files in my home folder.
What is the rational for setting up such lax permissions?
40
votes
2
answers
97k
views
Default groups for user in Ubuntu?
Installed HP Linux Imaging and Printing by using install script and something crashed. Now I'm only member of my own group and lp.
Which are the default groups for users in for example Ubuntu 12.10? ...
13
votes
2
answers
26k
views
How can I restrict program access to other users?
I'm setting up a new user account, and I want to allow access to only certain programs for just that account. How would I go around doing that?
239
votes
5
answers
575k
views
How can I retrospectively create a default home directory for an existing user in terminal?
I created a user without a home directory and now I want to create a home directory for them. Not just a folder called /home/new-user, but a complete default home directory with all the normal folders ...
96
votes
9
answers
206k
views
How to change default user in WSL Ubuntu bash on Windows 10
I installed the WSL Bash on Windows 10 and set my user to e.g. 'abc' but now I want to change it to something else.
How can I change the user name of the user I'm logged in as?
When I open bash it ...
150
votes
4
answers
314k
views
How to remove a user from a group?
I added a user account to the admin group and discovered I added wrong user. So I now have to remove the account from the admin group.
How can I remove an account from a group without deleting the ...
141
votes
12
answers
333k
views
Home directory not being created
I am trying to understand system administration on Ubuntu. So, as an example, I create a dummy user using
sudo useradd -d /home/linda linda
and passwd to create the password. I check that an entry ...
22
votes
5
answers
23k
views
I deleted the "/etc/passwd" file and cannot log in
I was trying to change my username and also my home directory (/home/username) and my system started to crash. I deleted the passwd file but I had a backup named passwd_bkp. I tried to rename this ...
134
votes
6
answers
222k
views
What is the purpose of the 'nobody' user?
After I read List all human users I noticed that there is a user account named 'nobody' in my Ubuntu system.
Also I noticed that I can login in this account from terminal using the following command ...
89
votes
6
answers
287k
views
How to make user home folder after account creation? [duplicate]
I created a new user with useradd name and forgot to use -d -m to create their home directory. I tried making one, copying the contents of /etc/skel, and chowning everything to the new user.
...
41
votes
6
answers
126k
views
How can I prevent users accessing anything but their own home directory?
How can I prevent users accessing anything but their own home directory?
For example, I have a NTFS partition mounted under /media/ntfs, so if the user logs in through ssh he can reach this partition....
35
votes
3
answers
94k
views
Share a Folder between two Local Users
I and my brother have User Accounts on this machine. I want to share the Documents directory with him.
Is there a STRAIGHTFORWARD way to do it?
I am not a power user so I am looking for a way to do ...
16
votes
2
answers
18k
views
How do I set up new users with skel
i have on my server a settings i use for all my users. every time i create a new user i have to copy all the settings over and over.
for example:
.vimrc.
.profile
.bashrc
firefox homepage to our ...
10
votes
4
answers
6k
views
Why there are many guest accounts on my system?
After I saw this answer, I realized that there are many guest accounts on my system:
grep guest /etc/passwd
guest-jzXeRx:x:117:127:Guest,,,:/tmp/guest-jzXeRx:/bin/false
guest-l5dAPU:x:118:128:Guest,,,...
8
votes
1
answer
16k
views
How do I give multiple users access to a Windows NTFS partition?
I have USB hard-drive connected to my Ubuntu (11.04) machine. Every time I reboot the computer and login it mounts the hard-drive. Since the disk has NTFS on it, Linux assigns some user to be the ...
8
votes
6
answers
9k
views
Import users from CSV file
Is it possible to import users by using CSV file? or something like a LDAP connection to import all users?
113
votes
6
answers
301k
views
How to add a user without /home?
I want to create a new user to run a service on the system but don't want to have /home and other configuration files for it. Like there is a user for postgres but it doesn't have any /home directory.
65
votes
5
answers
174k
views
How to enable or disable a user?
I'm uing ubuntu 12.04 desktop. I have 3 users: user1(administrator), user2(standard) and guest. I wanted to disable user1 and enable user2 which auto logs on with no password but after I did that I ...
20
votes
5
answers
91k
views
Proper way to add a user account via bash script
Here's the script code I'm using now:
getent group $MYGROUP
if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then
sudo su -c "groupadd $MYGROUP"
fi
sudo su -c "useradd mynewuser -p mypassword -m -g $PRIMARYGRP -G $MYGROUP"
...
12
votes
3
answers
11k
views
How do I change the guest session defaults
I have a quite tunned up gnome desktop and I would like for the guest session to share most of the user settings, this includes:
Gtk and Metacity themes.
Number of panels, placement and applets.
...
11
votes
5
answers
13k
views
Why does Ubuntu force users to create a password upon installation?
There's been one problem I've had since I installed Ubuntu to run alongside Windows, I assume this would also be the same if it was installed to replace the other operating system as well, the ...
6
votes
3
answers
11k
views
Unity greeter background not changing for users automatically after upgrade
I have recently upgraded from 11.10 to 12.04. Normal upgrade, no new installation. In 11.10 I was using Simple LightDM Manager tool to set a custom wallpaper on the login screen. This tool ...
5
votes
2
answers
14k
views
Change user password while password is empty [duplicate]
I have a realy strange problem in Ubuntu 11.10. I have by accident my password set to empty. If I wan't to install software now the system asks for a password, but I haven't one anymore. If I enter my ...
2
votes
4
answers
11k
views
How to permanently disable user switching in Gnome 3?
I have six boys, and they tend to ask another parent when wanting to use one of the computers, but don't bother asking the logged in user if they're finished. All four machines are running Ubuntu 12....
58
votes
6
answers
353k
views
How to add users to vboxusers to enable USB usage
I want to use my flashdrive in Windows XP, which I am currently running in Virtualbox, but when I open up the settings to enable usb usage, I get an error:
Failed to access the USB subsystem.
...
38
votes
4
answers
35k
views
What are the disadvantages of having a dot in a user name?
A student just asked what could be the downside of having a dot (. ) in the name of the user. For example: john.doe
How will this affect the system or any apps for that matter?
34
votes
1
answer
128k
views
Properly modify home dir
I would like to know, whow to modify properly the homedir of a user.
I already know about this command
usermod -d /home/peter peter
But now, do I have to create the homedir before?
And what will ...
33
votes
1
answer
70k
views
Can you unencrypt / remove encryption from a user home folder? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
How to stop using built-in home directory encryption?
During installation I have chosen to encrypt my user's home folder.
Can I un-encrypt it? How would I do that? I just ...
16
votes
6
answers
26k
views
Ubuntu 20.04 user not listed to login
I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 20.04 and today, after turning on my computer, by default, Ubuntu showed that welcome screen where you create your user and whatever. I thought my OS crashed because it ...
15
votes
3
answers
2k
views
Two accounts on same computer - how can I make a share folder for both?
I need a shared folder. My wife and I need to exchange files on the same computer. How can we do that?
4
votes
1
answer
4k
views
Lost supplementary user groups for GUI login session
Ubuntu 16.04.5
Very weird situation - after Xorg crash, now every time when I login into Unity, my user account doesn't have it's system groups like adm, sudo, plugdev, fuse etc. But when I login on ...
1
vote
1
answer
431
views
Why such long list of users and groups in my system?
On my laptop $ cat /etc/passwd | wc -l results 42!
And cat /etc/group | wc -l results 70!!
The only user of my laptop is myself and there is only an extra user named "guest". But why such large ...
0
votes
2
answers
3k
views
What is the root user?
If you use sudo su - or sudo -s you will have full root privileges.
Is this root user an official user or is it from Canonical?
~$ sudo su -
[sudo] password for username:
root@lp:~# id
uid=0(root) ...
94
votes
2
answers
329k
views
What is the www-data user?
I'm working through How To Serve Django Applications with uWSGI and Nginx on Ubuntu 16.04. At the end of the "Create a systemd Unit File for uWSGI" in the article they discuss the www-data user. What ...
64
votes
4
answers
212k
views
Renaming user name [duplicate]
I made a mistake in the username at the time of installation. So I changed the name of the user after logging in by creating a guest account with SUDO rights. But when I checked the list of users ...
41
votes
9
answers
91k
views
Unknown user in statoverride file
I had an application installed on my htpc running ubuntu server called mediatomb, a few months ago I uninstalled it and replaced it with a Plex install. At the weekend when querying existing users on ...
31
votes
8
answers
32k
views
List all human users
How can I list all human users that I've created? I've tried cat /etc/passwd and it just lists a lot of stuff.
22
votes
3
answers
31k
views
How to run multiple user X sessions on the same computer, at the same time?
I want to have more than one user logged on at the same time, on the same computer.
Each user should have a full X session.
It is easy enough to log in to multiple concurrent non-X Linux terminals, ...
18
votes
3
answers
65k
views
Disable sudo permission to user from command line
I have activated root user in ubuntu and want to use ubuntu as server with no DE. For this I want to disable sudo privilege given to first user. How can I do this from command line ? I know I can use ...
17
votes
2
answers
3k
views
How to check which package created a user?
It is suspected that some packages have scripts run at install time which create user accounts in /etc/passwd. How can I check which package created a specific user?