In this chapter, you will

• Understand the concepts of users and groups

• Discover Solaris password management facilities

• Learn how to create users and groups using the CLI

• Review the management of users and groups using the admintool GUI

The concept of the user is central to Solaris—all processes and files on a Solaris system are owned by a particular user, and are assigned to a specific user group. No data or activities on the system may exist without a valid user or group. Managing users and groups as a Solaris administrator can be a challenging activity—you will be responsible for assigning all of the privileges granted or denied to a user or group of users, and many of these permissions carry great risk. For example, a user with an inappropriate privilege level may execute commands as the superuser, causing damage to your system. In this chapter, we will learn how to add users to the system, and add and modify groups. In addition, the contents and structure of key user databases, including the password, shadow password, and group files, are examined in detail. Finally, we introduce the admintool, which is a GUI-based user administration tool designed to make user management easier under Solaris.