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Practice Exercise: Managing User Accounts, Users, and Groups

Objective

Learn how to manage user accounts, create new users, and work with user groups in a Linux environment.

Task 1: Managing User Accounts

  • Open a terminal window.
  • Use the whoami command to display your current username.
  • Create a new user account named newuser using the useradd command.
  • New user account creation needs sudo privileges
  • Set a password for the new user using the passwd command.
  • As a sudo user you can change another users password
  • Switch to the newuser account using the su command.
  • Display the current user and verify that you are now the newuser.
  • Exit the newuser account using the exit command. 
    [intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ whoami
intern
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ sudo useradd newuser
[sudo] password for intern:
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ sudo passwd newuser
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: password updated successfully
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ su newuser
Password:
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ whoami
newuser
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ exit
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$

Task 2: User Groups

  • List all existing user groups on your system using the cat /etc/group command.
  • Create a new group named developers using the groupadd command.
  • Similar to useradd groupadd require sudo privileges as well
  • Add your newuser user account to the developers group using the usermod command.
  • Verify that your user is now part of the developers group.
  • Display the group memberships of both your user account and newuser. 
    [intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ cat /etc/group
root:x:0:
daemon:x:1:
bin:x:2:
sys:x:3:
adm:x:4:intern,syslog
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ sudo groupadd developers
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ sudo usermod newuser -G developers
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ groups newuser
newuser : newuser developers
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ groups newuser intern
newuser : newuser developers
intern : intern adm cdrom sudo dip plugdev lxd

Task 3: User Home Directories

  • Navigate to the /home directory.
  • List the contents of the /home directory to view user home directories.
  • Create a new directory named projects in your home directory.
  • Set the ownership of the projects directory to your user and the group developers.
  • Verify the ownership and permissions of the projects directory.
  • Create a text file named project_plan.txt inside the projects directory.
  • Check the ownership and permissions of the new text file.
  • Switch to the newuser account using the su command.
  • Attempt to access the projects directory and project_plan.txt. Note any access restrictions. 
    [intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ ls /home
intern
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ sudo mkdir /home/projects
[sudo] password for intern:
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ sudo chown intern:developers /home/projects
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ ls -l /home
total 8
drwxr-x--- 10 intern intern     4096 Sep 18 14:53 intern
drwxr-xr-x  2 intern developers 4096 Sep 19 09:26 projects
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ touch /home/projects/project_plan.txt
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ ls -l /home/projects/project_plan.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 intern intern 0 Sep 19 09:28 /home/projects/project_plan.txt
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ su -l newuser
Password:
[newuser@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ cd /home/projects
[newuser@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ touch test.txt
touch: cannot touch 'test.txt': Permission denied
[newuser@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ ls -l /home
total 8
drwxr-x--- 10 intern intern     4096 Sep 18 14:53 intern
drwxr-xr-x  2 intern developers 4096 Sep 19 09:28 projects
  • As you can see even though we are part of the group developers that own the directory we can't still write since the group only has read and execute access.
  • If you don't know how to read the file permission yet we will discuss it in the next topics

Task 4: Deleting User Accounts and Groups

  • Remove the user newuser from the system using the userdel command.
  • Verify that newuser is no longer listed in /etc/passwd.
  • Remove the developers group from the system using the groupdel command.
  • Verify that the developers group is no longer listed in /etc/group. 
    [intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ cat /etc/passwd | grep newuser
newuser:x:1001:1001::/home/newuser:/bin/sh
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ sudo userdel newuser
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ cat /etc/passwd | grep newuser
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ cat /etc/group | grep developers
developers:x:1002:
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ sudo groupdel developers
[intern@intern-a1t-inf-lnx1 ~]$ cat /etc/group | grep developers

Conclusion:

In this lab exercise, you've gained hands-on experience with managing user accounts, creating new users, working with user groups, and configuring user home directories in a Linux environment. Understanding user management is essential for system administration and security.