Managing User and Group Accounts

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Managing User and Group Accounts

The ability to manage user accounts and group membership is a crucial tool in any system administrator's box. In this hands-on lab, we will work with commands like `useradd`, `passwd`, `usermod`, `groupadd`, `groupmod` and `groupdel`. By the time we're done, we will have a good grasp on how to use these tools for managing user accounts and groups on any Linux system.

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Lab Info

Level

Intermediate

Last updated

Sep 23, 2025

Duration

30m

Challenge

Create a tester Group in the Reserved Range
Use the groupadd command with the -r option to create the group testers:
```
groupadd -r tester
```
Challenge

Add the test1 User and Make Them a Member of the tester Group. Lock and unlock the test1 User, and Force them to Change their Password
Use the command useradd with the -G option to spection the tester group:
```
useradd -G tester test1
```
Set a temporary password (that the user will have to change the first time they log in):
```
echo Temp@$$ | passwd --stdin test1
```
We could also set one manually by just running passwd test1 and typing/confirming a password by hand.

Lock and unlock the account using the usermod command.
```
usermod -L test1
tail -n1 /etc/passwd /etc/shadow
usermod -U test1
```
We can run tail -n1 /etc/passwd /etc/shadow to see if it got set.

And to make test1 change their password on the next login, run:
```
chage -d0 test1
```
Verify the account and groups using the id command.
```
id test1
```
Challenge

Modify cloud_user to Add Secondary Membership in tester Group
Use the usermod command with the -aG options to add cloud_user to the tester group:
```
usermod -aG tester cloud_user
```
We can run id cloud_user to check our work and see if the user is in the group now.
Challenge

Create the /usr/local/test_scripts Directory Owned by cloud_user and Set GID Permission for the testers Group with No Access to Others
Create the directory:
```
mkdir /usr/local/test_scripts
```
Make sure it's owned by cloud_user, and the tester group:
```
chown cloud_user:tester /usr/local/test_scripts
```
Give the group write permissions, and revoke any permissions from anyone else:
```
chmod g+ws,o-rx /usr/local/test_scripts
```
As a best practice, verify your work. Become the new user, get into the new directory, and create a couple things to look at:
```
su - test1
cd /usr/local/test_scripts
mkdir dir1
touch file1
ls -l
```

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