Archive:Docs/Drafts/AdministrationGuide/UserAccounts/Introduction

User Accounts

Introduction

Creation and management of users and user groups is a fundamental practice of system administration on multi-user systems such as Linux. The user accounts system provides a method to distinguish between different users and accounts. Each user can be assigned a separate and secure storage area for files and preferences. This system gives users the ability to customize their working environment according to their needs.

Fedora includes two types of accounts - system and non-system accounts. System accounts include the root user and others such as the apache user. System accounts are created during the installation process and used by various system daemons and utilities to perform system-wide tasks. Fedora reserves the first 499 UIDs for system accounts. This is why they are sometimes reffered to as low ID accounts.

UID is the abbreviation of the term User Identifier

It represents unique numerical equivalent of the username, which computer uses as a reference to username. Similarly, GID is numerical value that represents Group Identifier. UID 0 (zero) is always reserved for root user.

Non-system accounts start from uid 500. These accounts are used for regular users to perform day-to-day tasks. Usually, the first "normal" user account is created during the first boot following the system's installation. After that, user and group accounts can be created with standard procedures, explained later in this guide.

Ways to Create and Modify User and Group Accounts

As with most other tasks, system administrator can chose between two ways of creating and subsequently modifying user accounts:

• Command line interface
• Graphical interface

The account creation process is explained on the next page.

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