Absolute Beginners Guide to Networking (4th Edition)

Users can be added to the system using the command line (as shown earlier in the chapter) or using a GUI tool. Red Hat version 8.0 provides the Red Hat User Manager (to open it using KDE, select the KDE menu, System Settings, then Users and Groups). Figure 10.7 shows the Red Hat User Manager.

Users that you added to the system during the installation process will be listed in the Red Hat User Manager (as shown in Figure 10.7). To add a new user, click the Add User button on the User Manager toolbar. The Create New User box will open (see Figure 10.8). You must supply the user name and password. You can also supply the home directory for the user if you wish to select a directory other than the default (home).

After supplying the information for the user, select the OK button. You will be returned to the User Manager and the new user account will be added to the user list.

As with other operating systems, group membership can be used to provide different permission levels to a user in reference to a particular file or service on the system. For more about users and group membership in relation to system security, see Chapter 20.

Red Hat Linux does supply Standard Groups (groups created on the system by the installation program). These groups can be used to provide administrative abilities to users. There are standard groups such as sys and adm, and groups for particular services such as apache (the Apache Web server). In most cases you will not want to add regular users to these groups because it greatly extends their abilities to create mischief on the system. For example, including a regular user in the adm group will provide the user with administrative privileges over the system not typically afforded to any account other than the root account.

You can create groups using the Red Hat User Manager. Click the Add Group button in the User Manager and then supply the name of the new group. Click OK to create the new group. Once the group has been created, you can add users to the group. The most straightforward way to add users to the group is the following:

1. In the Red Hat User Manager, click the Groups tab.

2. Select the group that you want to add the users to.

3. Click the Properties button on the User Manager toolbar. The Properties box will open for the group.

4. Click the Group Users tab on the Properties box (see Figure 10.9).

   Figure 10.9. Users can easily be added to groups.

5. You can add users to the group by selecting the check box for those users.

6. When you have finished adding the users, click the OK button.

You will be returned to the User Manager. When you have finished working the User Manager, you can close it by clicking the Close button.