5.1 User Account Management

User account management is, if not the most important job of a system administrator, certainly one of the most visible. An individual's login account defines the overall system to the user. When the system administrator configures the login environment appropriately by determining the command path, setting an informative shell prompt, defining helpful aliases and necessary environment variables, and assigning group memberships, the users can immediately become productive.

Actually, creating user accounts and the eventual removal or retirement of user accounts is just the beginning, and end, of user account management. In between is the day-to-day support of your user community. This includes account modifications, such as resetting passwords and adjusting group memberships, ensuring that users are aware of upcoming system changes or outages, and managing security to allow users to get their work done while protecting the system from accidental or intentional harm. Behind the scenes, the administrator should define user and group IDs (UIDs and GIDs) to avoid collisions, create appropriate default account "dot" files, create and monitor home directory file systems, and perform a variety of other tasks necessary for the smooth operation of a Tru64 UNIX system.

This chapter covers the details of adding and removing user accounts, plus other aspects of user account management. In addition, some administrative strategies to be aware of are presented.

5.2 Base Security vs. Enhanced Security

Before moving on to the particulars of user account management in Tru64 UNIX, the two levels of security available in Tru64...