10.2 User Management with Cockpit

If the Cockpit web interface is installed and enabled on the system (a topic covered in the chapter entitled Figure 10-1 below:

Figure 10-1

The screen will display any existing user accounts on the system and provides a button to add additional accounts. To create a new account, click on the Create New Account button and enter the requested information in the resulting dialog (Figure 10-2). Note that the option is also available to create the account but to lock it until later:

Figure 10-2

To modify a user account, select it from the main screen and make any modifications to the account details:

Figure 10-3

This screen allows a variety of tasks to be performed including locking or unlocking the account, changing the password or forcing the user to configure a new password. If the Server Administrator option is selected, the user will be added to the sudo group and permitted to use sudo to perform administrative tasks. A button is also provided to delete the user from the system.

If the user will be accessing the system remotely using an SSH connection with key encryption, the user’s public key may be added within this screen. SSH access and authentication will be covered later in “Configuring SSH Key-based Authentication on Ubuntu”.