Operating System - Linux
1828663 Members
1461 Online
109984 Solutions
New Discussion

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

 
SOLVED
Go to solution
yyghp
Super Advisor

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

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 !
8 REPLIES 8
Kodjo Agbenu
Honored Contributor
Solution

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

Hi,

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

Good lcuk.
Kodjo
Learn and explain...
Gopi Sekar
Honored Contributor

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


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
Never Never Never Giveup
Wim Van den Wyngaert
Honored Contributor

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

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

Wim
Wim
Steven E. Protter
Exalted Contributor

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

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
Steven E Protter
Owner of ISN Corporation
http://isnamerica.com
http://hpuxconsulting.com
Sponsor: http://hpux.ws
Twitter: http://twitter.com/hpuxlinux
Founder http://newdatacloud.com
HGN
Honored Contributor

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

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
Ross Minkov
Esteemed Contributor

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

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
Devesh Pant_1
Esteemed Contributor

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

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

thanks
Devesh
Ross Minkov
Esteemed Contributor

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

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