Users and groups

Administrators needs to have their own user on the server. To get root access, they must also be a member of the sudo group. Other applications may require group membership, too.

Managing users

Forgotten passwords

Use sudo passwd USERNAME to set a new password for a user. Set a new password, (preferibly a strong one), and then have the user immediately change their own password after logging in (they will use simply passwd to do that after logging in).

A python command to generate a strong password: python -c "import secrets; print(secrets.token_urlsafe(14))"

Adding users

(Reference: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-add-and-delete-users-on-ubuntu-20-04).

Add users with sudo adduser USERNAME, and add users to the sudo group with usermod -aG sudo USERNAME.

Root privleges: Run sudo visudo. It opens up a text editor. Find the line

    root    ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

And add a new line for the new user (here, the new user is named newuser):

    newuser ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

Deleting users

Delete a user with sudo deluser USERNAME. You can remove the users home directory at the same time with sudo deluser --remove-home USERNAME. Remember: If that user had sudo rights, remove the line that was added previously, with the sudo visudo command.

Managing groups

To add a user to a group, use sudo usermod -aG GROUP USERNAME. Check group membership of a user with sudo groups USERNAME.

To see the group number of a user, look at the file /etc/group. To create a new group, use sudo groupadd GROUPNAME. This is rarely needed.

Group attribute for files

Change a directory to be owned by a specified user with chown USERNAME -R DIRECTORY. Change group ownership using chgrp USER -R DIRECTORY. Do both in one command using chmod USERNAME:GROUPNAME -R DIRECTORY.