RHCSA Practical Lab Series – User & Group Management

🔍 Lab 4: Creating User Accounts and Group Permissions

📌 Objective

In this lab, you will:

✔ Create a new user group
✔ Add users with specific group memberships
✔ Restrict shell access for a specific user
✔ Set passwords for all users

📌 Step 1: Create the User Group

We first need to create a group called sysadmins:

[root@node1 ~]# groupadd sysadmins

📌 Tip: The groupadd command creates a new group. You can verify its creation using:

[root@node1 ~]# cat /etc/group | grep sysadmins

📌 Step 2: Create Users and Assign Group Memberships

Now, we will create three users (alice, bob, and charlie) with the following rules:

🔹 alice should be a member of sysadmins

[root@node1 ~]# useradd -G sysadmins alice

🔹 bob should also be a member of sysadmins

[root@node1 ~]# useradd -G sysadmins bob

🔹 charlie should not have shell access and should not be in sysadmins

[root@node1 ~]# useradd -s /bin/false charlie

📌 Tip:

• -G sysadmins → Adds the user to the sysadmins group.
• -s /bin/false → Prevents the user from logging into the shell.

🔹 Verify group membership:

[root@node1 ~]# id alice
[root@node1 ~]# id bob
[root@node1 ~]# id charlie

🔹 Expected Output (example for alice):

uid=1001(alice) gid=1001(alice) groups=1001(alice),1002(sysadmins)

📌 Step 3: Set User Passwords

The passwords for all users (alice, bob, charlie) should be cloudnetops.

[root@node1 ~]# echo cloudnetops | passwd --stdin alice
[root@node1 ~]# echo cloudnetops | passwd --stdin bob
[root@node1 ~]# echo cloudnetops | passwd --stdin charlie

🔹 Verify the password has been set (prompt for password change should not appear):

[root@node1 ~]# su - alice

Enter cloudnetops as the password and ensure login is successful.

📌 Tip:

• The echo cloudnetops | passwd --stdin username command sets a password in a single step.
• If su - charlie fails, it means shell access has been successfully restricted.

📌 Step 4: Verify User Restrictions

🔹 Test login for alice (should succeed)

[root@node1 ~]# su - alice

🔹 Test login for charlie (should fail due to restricted shell access)

[root@node1 ~]# su - charlie

🔹 Expected Output:

This account is currently not available.

✅ If charlie cannot log in, the shell restriction is working correctly.

✅ Final Summary

In this lab, you successfully:
✔ Created a new group (sysadmins)
✔ Created three users (alice, bob, and charlie)
✔ Added alice and bob to sysadmins
✔ Restricted shell access for charlie
✔ Set passwords for all users

📌 Next Lab: Automating Tasks with Cron Jobs

Objective

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