10. Managing Ubuntu Users and Groups

During the installation of Ubuntu, the installer provided the opportunity to create a user account for the system. We should not lose sight of the fact that Ubuntu is actually an enterprise class, multi-user and multi-tasking operating system. In order to use the full power of Ubuntu, therefore, it is likely that more than one user will need to be given access to the system. Each user should have his or her own user account login, password, home directory and privileges.

Users are further divided into groups for the purposes of easier administration and those groups can have different levels of privileges. For example, you may have a group of users who work in the Accounting department. In such an environment you may wish to create an accounts group and assign all the Accounting department users to that group.

In this chapter we will cover the steps to add, remove and manage users and groups on an Ubuntu system. There are a number of ways to manage users and groups on Ubuntu, the most common options being command-line tools and the Cockpit web interface. In this chapter we will look at both approaches to user management.