Fedora® 8 and Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® Bible

Chapter 11. Setting Up and Supporting Users

In This Chapter

• Creating user accounts

• Setting user defaults

• Creating portable desktops

• Providing support to users

• Deleting user accounts

• Checking disk quotas

• Sending mail to all users

One of the more fundamental and important tasks of administering a Linux system is setting up and supporting user accounts. Computers, after all, are tools to be used by people. Apocalyptic science fiction plots aside, computers have no purpose without users.

When you install Fedora or RHEL, you are required to create the root (administrator) user account. The first time you boot Fedora or RHEL, you are asked to create a regular user account, using any name you choose. Several other administrative user accounts that you will probably never use directly are set up automatically (such as apache, rpm, and lp).

Note

For a description of the root user account and how to use it, see Chapter 10.

This chapter discusses the basics of setting up user accounts and offers tips on easing the burden of supporting a large number of Linux users.

Creating User Accounts

Every person who uses your Fedora or RHEL system should have a separate user account. Having a user account provides each person with an area in which to securely store files. A user account also defines which files and directories a user is permitted to create, modify, or delete throughout the computer's file system.

Some user accounts are already there when you install your Linux system. Administrative users (originally ...