user Id vs Password Post: 7410

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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers user Id vs Password Post 7410 by LivinFree on Wednesday 26th of September 2001 03:55:46 AM

09-26-2001

Registered User

Well, as is indicated by their names, UserID is what identifies you to the machine you are logging in to. The Password is a (hopefully) unique string that only the owner of that account should know. This keeps others from logging in to your account.

The Unix password file (/etc/passwd) contains the following fields for each user ->
name:passwd:uid:gid:gecos:dir:shell

* The name is the UserID.

* Password is, well, the password (This is either stored in encrypted form, so that no one can know your password just by looking at this file, or stored in a different file, called 'shadow'. If the password is stored elsewhere, there will be an 'x' in the password field).

* The UID is your UserID - a number unique to your system that identifies you to the computer ( sort of like a hostname like slashdot.org is another name for the IP address 64.28.67.150 ).

* The GID is a GroupID - you can belong to different groups to identify you further.

* GECOS is leftover from the old (you guessed it) GECOS operating system - this give even friendlier information, depending on how it is set up, like your full name, department, office number, phone number, so on...

* The DIR is your home directory - when you log in, this is where you will be, and most likely where you store all of your files.

* The shell field tells the computer what "shell" to use, like ksh, sh, bash, csh, and so on... The shell is what you type into - it "translates" to make the commands you type run. It talks (pretty much) directly to the core of the Operating System.

Anyhow, this now concludes the short passwd tutorial. Hope that helped!

LivinFree

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sss_useradd

SSS_USERADD(8)							 SSSD Manual pages						    SSS_USERADD(8)

NAME

       sss_useradd - create a new user

SYNOPSIS

       sss_useradd [options] LOGIN

DESCRIPTION

       sss_useradd creates a new user account using the values specified on the command line plus the default values from the system.

OPTIONS

       -u,--uid UID
	   Set the UID of the user to the value of UID. If not given, it is chosen automatically.

       -c,--gecos COMMENT
	   Any text string describing the user. Often used as the field for the user's full name.

       -h,--home HOME_DIR
	   The home directory of the user account. The default is to append the LOGIN name to /home and use that as the home directory. The base
	   that is prepended before LOGIN is tunable with "user_defaults/baseDirectory" setting in sssd.conf.

       -s,--shell SHELL
	   The user's login shell. The default is currently /bin/bash. The default can be changed with "user_defaults/defaultShell" setting in
	   sssd.conf.

       -G,--groups GROUPS
	   A list of existing groups this user is also a member of.

       -m,--create-home
	   Create the user's home directory if it does not exist. The files and directories contained in the skeleton directory (which can be
	   defined with the -k option or in the config file) will be copied to the home directory.

       -M,--no-create-home
	   Do not create the user's home directory. Overrides configuration settings.

       -k,--skel SKELDIR
	   The skeleton directory, which contains files and directories to be copied in the user's home directory, when the home directory is
	   created by sss_useradd.

	   Special files (block devices, character devices, named pipes and unix sockets) will not be copied.

	   This option is only valid if the -m (or --create-home) option is specified, or creation of home directories is set to TRUE in the
	   configuration.

       -Z,--selinux-user SELINUX_USER
	   The SELinux user for the user's login. If not specified, the system default will be used.

       -?,--help
	   Display help message and exit.

THE LOCAL DOMAIN

       In order to function correctly, a domain with "id_provider=local" must be created and the SSSD must be running.

       The administrator might want to use the SSSD local users instead of traditional UNIX users in cases where the group nesting (see
       sss_groupadd(8)) is needed. The local users are also useful for testing and development of the SSSD without having to deploy a full remote
       server. The sss_user* and sss_group* tools use a local LDB storage to store users and groups.

SEE ALSO

       sssd(8), sssd.conf(5), sssd-ldap(5), sssd-krb5(5), sssd-simple(5), sssd-ipa(5), sssd-ad(5), sssd-sudo(5),sss_cache(8), sss_debuglevel(8),
       sss_groupadd(8), sss_groupdel(8), sss_groupshow(8), sss_groupmod(8), sss_useradd(8), sss_userdel(8), sss_usermod(8), sss_obfuscate(8),
       sss_seed(8), sssd_krb5_locator_plugin(8), sss_ssh_authorizedkeys(8), sss_ssh_knownhostsproxy(8),pam_sss(8).

AUTHORS

       The SSSD upstream - http://fedorahosted.org/sssd

SSSD
								    06/17/2014							    SSS_USERADD(8)