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6. Click OK when you’re done.

The group is created. Now, you need to add the members.

7. Back in the Groups tab of the user manager, double-click the group in the list.

The Group Properties dialog appears, as shown in Figure 40-6.

•Figure 40-6: The Group Properties dialog.

8.To add users to your new group, choose the Group Users tab.

9.Check the boxes next to the users that will be members of the group.

10.Click OK when you’re finished.

The Groups tab in the user manager is updated to reflect the new group members.

Filtering users and groups

One really handy feature of the Fedora/Mandrake user manager is the Search Filter, located in the upperright corner of the screen. You can apply the Search Filter to either the Users list or the Groups list.

To use the filter, type in the first few letters of the user name and click Apply Filter. The names are screened to include only those starting with that search string (see Figure 40-7).

• Figure 40-7: The Users list, filtered for names beginning with fr.

To refresh the list to show all users, clear the Search Filter field and click Apply Filter. The list then refreshes, showing all users.

Managing Users and Groups with the SuSE User Administrator

The SuSE user and group administrator is part of the YaST Control Center. SuSE’s user and group tools are powerful and friendly — a timesaving combination.

To start the SuSE user administrator, open the main menu and choose System YaST. (Enter the superuser password if prompted). When the YaST control center appears, click Security and Users and then Edit and Create Users.

The user and group administrator opens, as shown in Figure 40-8.

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• Figure 40-8: The SuSE User and Group Administration

dialog.

Adding new users

To add a new user, follow these steps:

1. In the user administrator, click Add (near the bottom of the window).

The Add a New Local User dialog opens, as shown in Figure 40-9.

• Figure 40-9: The Add a New Local User dialog.

2. Fill in the fields in the dialog appropriately:

Full User Name: This name is for internal use. Type in the full name of the new user.

User Login: This is the name of the new user account (in other words, the login name).

Password and Verify Password: Enter a password and verify the password in the next field. The password has to be at least five characters long, and it can be any combination of upperand lowercase letters, numbers, and characters.

3.Click Details to open the Add/Edit User Properties dialog, shown in Figure 40-10.

•Figure 40-10: The detailed user properties dialog.

4.Change the fields in the detailed properties dialog to suit your needs:

User ID (uid): In most cases, you can accept the default user ID chosen by YaST. If, for some reason, you need to choose a different user ID, type in a value between 500 and 6000: YaST will display an error message if the user ID you specify is already in use.

Home Directory: This defaults to /home/ username, but you can specify a different directory if you choose.

288 Technique 40: Taking Care of New (And Old) Users

Additional User Information: Enter any extra information that you want to note about this user. The information that you supply here is ignored by most Linux programs, but will be displayed if someone “fingers” this user with the finger command (see man finger for more information).

Login Shell: The option you choose from this drop-down list determines which shell starts when the user opens a terminal window. bash is usually a good choice.

Default Group: SuSE typically adds new users to the users group, but you can choose a different one by selecting the group from the Default Group drop-down list.

Additional Group Membership: Use the scrolling list on the right side of the dialog to enroll the user in other groups or to remove the user from other groups.

5.When you’re finished with the Add/Edit User Properties dialog, click Next to continue.

Note: If you click Back, YaST silently discards any changes that you made to the Add/Edit User Properties dialog.

6. Click Password Settings to open the Password

Settings dialog, shown in Figure 40-11.

7. Change the fields in the Password Settings dialog to enable and adjust the password aging options for this user:

Days Before Password Expiration to Issue Warning: The typical default value (7) starts warning the user one week before his or her password expires. Each time you log in to Linux, the login program compares the current date to the password expiration date for your account. If your password is about to expire, Linux displays a warning and suggests that you may want to change your password before it expires.

Days After Password Expires with Usable Login: This might seem like a strange question at first. If you can log in even though your password has expired, what good is password expiration? When you log in to Linux after your password has expired, you must change your password before you can do any other work. The default value for this field (-1) lets you change your expired password at any time. If you enter some other value in this field, you can only change your expired password within that interval — after that, you’ll have to ask the system administrator to reset your password for you.

Maximum Number of Days for the Same Password: Enter a value in this field to specify how often the user must change his or her password. If you enter, say, 7 in this field, the user must change his or her password every week.

Minimum Number of Days for the Same Password: The default value of 0 means that the user can change his or her password at any time. If, for some reason, you want the user to keep the same password for some period of time, enter the number of days in this field.

Expiration Date: If you enter a date in this field, the user account will be disabled after that date. Note that the expiration date is not the same thing as password aging. When your password expires, you can change it

• Figure 40-11: The Password Settings dialog.

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and continue to use your account. When your account expires, you will no longer be able to log in.

8. When you’re finished with the Password

Settings dialog, click Next to continue.

Note: If you click Back, YaST silently discards any changes that you made to the password settings.

9. When you’re back at the Add a New Local User dialog, click Create to create the account.

That’s it; you’ve just created a new user account. You now see the User and Group Administration dialog again (refer to Figure 40-8). The user account that you just created will not be active until you click Finish to close the window.

Modifying user accounts

You can also use YaST’s User and Group Administration tool to modify and delete user accounts.

If you need to delete a user, the process is simple: Just highlight the user and click Delete. When you delete a user, YaST will ask if you want to delete the user’s home directory as well — be sure you’ve made a backup of any files that may be important before you click Yes.

To modify a user account, highlight the account and click Edit (or just double-click the user name). When you modify an account, you use the same set of dialogs that you used to create the account: Simply change any settings that you want to modify and click Next to save your work.

Adding groups

A group is a collection of users. Groups make it easy to manage file permissions. If you have several users who all need to access the same set of files, create a new group with those users in it.

YaST makes it easy to create and modify groups. To add a new group, you use the same User and Group Administration tool that we described previously:

1. In the User and Group Administrator, click the

Groups option button near the top of the dialog.

2. Click Add.

YaST opens the Add a New Local Group dialog, shown in Figure 40-12.

•Figure 40-12: The Add a New Local Group dialog.

3.Type a name for the new group in the Group Name field.

4.Enter a Group ID or accept the default gid selected by YaST.

YaST displays an error message if the group ID you specify is already in use.

5.If you want Linux to require a password before a user can switch to this group, enter (and confirm) the password.

In most cases, you can leave the password blank: You must be a member of a group before you can switch to that group, so assigning a group password is usually overkill.

6.Use the scrolling list at the right side of the dialog to add and remove members of the new group.

7.Click Next to save your changes and return to the User and Group Administration dialog.