Ask Ubuntu
Ask Ubuntu

Questions tagged [users]

For questions related to users, user accounts, user permissions or guest accounts.

1534 questions
914
votes
8 answers

How to add existing user to an existing group?

I want to add the Apache user (www-data) to the audio group. I've read the man page for useradd, but I'm not having any luck. I'm running xubuntu 11.10. Here's what I'm doing: $ sudo useradd -G audio www-data useradd: user 'www-data' already…
Sparky1
  • 13,199
262
votes
11 answers

How do I kill processes in Ubuntu?

How do I kill all processes running by my own non-root account? I have some spinning smbd processes that I caused from my windows machine and so I telnetted into the linux server and I want to kill those spinning processes. I don't have authority…
djangofan
  • 3,874
253
votes
5 answers

How can I retrospectively create a default home directory for an existing user in terminal?

I created a user without a home directory and now I want to create a home directory for them. Not just a folder called /home/new-user, but a complete default home directory with all the normal folders and hidden files, etc. How can I do that?
Jo Rijo
  • 2,665
234
votes
2 answers

How can I display all users and groups with a command?

I want to display: All users and All groups in my system using command-line. users and groups commands display users currently logged in, and groups a user belongs to respectively. How to display a list of all users and all groups by…
Pandya
  • 37,289
226
votes
22 answers

Why is it bad to log in as root?

I've often come across posts on forums or other websites where you see people joking in such a manner about running/logging in as root as if it's something awful and everyone ought to know about it. However, there isn't much that a search reveals on…
Mussnoon
  • 5,236
166
votes
5 answers

How to enable root login?

I would like to enable the root account on my Ubuntu installation. I realize the security implications of this.
Lincity
  • 25,749
155
votes
4 answers

How to remove a user from a group?

I added a user account to the admin group and discovered I added wrong user. So I now have to remove the account from the admin group. How can I remove an account from a group without deleting the user?
Eonil
  • 2,101
152
votes
6 answers

What is the purpose of the 'nobody' user?

After I read List all human users I noticed that there is a user account named 'nobody' in my Ubuntu system. Also I noticed that I can login in this account from terminal using the following command and my password: sudo su nobody It doesn't mind…
Radu Rădeanu
  • 174,089
  • 51
  • 332
  • 407
151
votes
1 answer

Give user write access to folder

How do i give the user 'testuser' write privileges on the folder: /var/www/test/public_html
RSM
  • 1,635
151
votes
9 answers

Create a new SSH user on Ubuntu Server

Just created a new virtual Ubuntu server and I'm in the process of hardening it for production use. I currently have a root account. I want to do the following: Create a new user (let's call them jim for the rest of this). I want them to have a…
Oli
  • 299,380
150
votes
11 answers

Home directory not being created

I am trying to understand system administration on Ubuntu. So, as an example, I create a dummy user using sudo useradd -d /home/linda linda and passwd to create the password. I check that an entry has been made using cat…
tchakravarty
  • 1,757
  • 3
  • 14
  • 15
150
votes
9 answers

How can I find out my user name?

How do I know my username? I've installed Ubuntu, but I don't know my username, only my password. I can't access my laptop and it can't be opened.
Jayharte
  • 1,519
135
votes
6 answers

Can I set my user account to have no password?

If I attempt to change my password to nothing by opening "User Accounts", the "Change" button remains greyed out: How do I change my password to be empty? I know you can set Ubuntu to automatically log you in, but I want my password to be empty, I…
Flimm
  • 44,031
125
votes
3 answers

Logging out other users from the command line

Sometimes when there are too many users logged in it can cause my computer to become very slow and laggy due to low amount of available RAM. I would like to be able to quickly log out the other users from the command line instead of manually…
Isaiah
  • 60,750
117
votes
5 answers

How to add a user without /home?

I want to create a new user to run a service on the system but don't want to have /home and other configuration files for it. Like there is a user for postgres but it doesn't have any /home directory.
Owais Lone
  • 7,523
1
2 3
…
99 100