topic Re: Is root the only user to create users or change passwords of others in Operating System - Linux

Is root the only user to create users or change passwords of others

yyghp — Mon, 09 May 2005 17:44:27 GMT

Is it possible that I can have a user other than "root", which will be used by another guy, who can help me to manage users, such as create another users, change their password, etc... ?

Thanks !

Re: Is root the only user to create users or change passwords of others

Kodjo Agbenu — Mon, 09 May 2005 17:46:56 GMT

Hi,

sudo is your friend (man sudo, man sudoers).

Good lcuk.
Kodjo

Re: Is root the only user to create users or change passwords of others

Gopi Sekar — Tue, 10 May 2005 00:35:43 GMT

use sudo if you want to give rights for users to run a particular application in root access

use file permissions(user/group) to give rights for users to access a particular file

use sticky executable bit permission to run a particular application with root access

Gopi

Re: Is root the only user to create users or change passwords of others

Wim Van den Wyngaert — Tue, 10 May 2005 05:36:11 GMT

Use sudo for the command /usr/sbin/vipw
but do man vipw first.

Wim

Re: Is root the only user to create users or change passwords of others

Steven E. Protter — Tue, 10 May 2005 07:31:00 GMT

You can authorize other users to do it with sudo.

You can have more than one root user, but that is a really, bad idea from the security standpoint.

SEP

Re: Is root the only user to create users or change passwords of others

HGN — Tue, 10 May 2005 11:42:30 GMT

Hi

Well by this time you should have had the solution since others have already mentioned

It is a bad idea to have another root equivalent id(security risk)
sudo(root brokering tool) can give root access.

Rgds

HGN

Re: Is root the only user to create users or change passwords of others

Ross Minkov — Wed, 11 May 2005 19:00:03 GMT

sudo is your tool as everyone else already said. Just remember the /etc/sudoers file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root. /etc/sudoers has the list of who can run what.

Add something like this:

User_Alias usermgt = user1, user2

Cmnd_Alias USERMGT = /usr/bin/chfn, /usr/bin/chsh, /usr/bin/passwd, /usr/sbin/groupadd, /usr/sbin/groupdel, /usr/sbin/groupmod, /usr/sbin/useradd, /usr/sbin/usermod
(note that the above should be one line; also I just picked some commands, you might want to cusomize the list per your requirements)

accmgt ALL = USERMGT

HTH,
Ross

Re: Is root the only user to create users or change passwords of others

Devesh Pant_1 — Wed, 11 May 2005 23:52:51 GMT

A good use of restricted SAM can be of help
Sudo is a third party ( shareware ) software not supported by HP.

thanks
Devesh

Re: Is root the only user to create users or change passwords of others

Ross Minkov — Thu, 12 May 2005 00:26:35 GMT

Devesh,

> A good use of restricted SAM can be of help
This is the LINUX forum man. Not HPUX.

> Sudo is a third party ( shareware ) software
Sudo is FREE software. And btw, third party software is not the same as shareware.

> not supported by HP.
Are you talking about HPUX?

I think a good 90% if not more of all Linux installations out there have sudo installed.

Regards,
Ross