Archive:Docs/Drafts/AdministrationGuide/UserAccounts/AccountManagementGui

Account Management - Using A Graphical User Interface

This section explains how to manage user and group accounts using a graphical user interface (GUI). User Manager is the application used to create and manage user and group accounts.

To run User Manager, you must have the X Window system installed/configured and the system-config-users rpm installed.

To start User Manager select System > Administration > Users and groups from the main panel menu or from the command line run system-config-users and enter the root password at the prompt.

By default, User Manager does not display system accounts, enable the listing of system accounts, from the main menu select Edit > Preferences

and uncheck the box next to Hide system users and groups. You can use the Preferences window to modify the default behavior of automatically assigning the next available UID or GID to user and group accounts or creating the GID of the user's private group with the identical value as the user's UID. This is achieved by unchecking the appropriate boxes in the New users pane of the Preferences window.

To search for the user, enter first few letters of the username in the search filter field and click the Apply filter button.

You can sort the users list by clicking on the column name. Text fields are sorted in alphabetical order and numerical fields in the ascending order of the values in the field.

Adding A New User

To add a new account click the Add User button on the main toolbar.

Type the username, user's full name and password (remember passwords are case-sensitive) in appropriate fields. Pre-selected fields represent the defaults for Fedora - /bin/bash is default shell, /home/<username> is created as user's home directory, private group with the same name will be created for user and next available UID will be used. If you choose to, you can change any of these options. Once you supply all the information, click [OK] button to create account.

Adding A New Group

To list the existing groups in the User Manager window click on the Groups tab. The same rules apply for sorting available columns and searching for a particular group as applied to the Users tab.

To create a new group, click the Add Group button on the main toolbar of the User Manager.

Type the group name in the Group Name field and click [OK] . By default, the new group will be added with the next available GID. You can manually change this behavior by checking the box Specify group ID manually and selecting a different, unused number from the list.

Modifying User Accounts

To display the properties of a user account, select the account from the list and click the Properties button, which is now active, on the main toolbar of the User Manager window. The User Properties window opens, with User Data tab focused:

You can change the account name, user's full name, password, home directory and user's shell by altering information in appropriate fields.

Click the Account info tab.

Check Enable account expiration box and enter the date to expire user account on that day. Check Local password is locked box to lock the user account.

Click the Password info tab.

Time of the last password change is displayed. Check Enable password expiration box. This will allow you to disable password change for user, force the user to change their password and warn the user about that change in advance and when the account will become inactive. Each of the four fields accepts integers, representing number of days.

Click the Groups tab.

Change the user's group membership by checking or unchecking the box next to group name. If the user is a member of multiple groups, set the user's primary group by selecting the group from the Primary group drop-down list.

Modifying Group Accounts

To modify group accounts select the group from the Groups tab of the User Manager

To view group properties, click the Properties button on the main toolbar. The Group Properties window opens

with the Group Data" tab in focus. To change the group name, edit text in the Group Name field.

Click the Group Users tab.

To add users to this group, check the box next to appropriate user names on the list.

The next section provides links to additional reading material for this topic.

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