Hi all

Though it has been asked many times but i never got the clue for it.

I created one user as machadd and put it in ROOT Group. This user is not able to execute adduser command. When this user try to add any user then the error message comes as
"unable to lock file"

Kindly give me some solution on it.

Bally T.

Well that's really the wrong way of doing things. Just because you add a user to root's own group called group doesn't give them the right to do everything root can.

Setup sudo or just su when needed, that's the correct way.

Dear trickykid

Can you please help me in setting up sudo. I am struggling to do that.

My requirement is that i wants a non root user ( whom i dont wants to give root password) to execute the commands "adduser " & "smbpaswd".

Regards
Bally T.

sudo allows you to allocate some or all commands that can normally only be run by the root user to other lesser beings.

The file which controls sudo permissions is /etc/sudoers

To edit this file type:

visudo

To grant full permissions to a user add an entry like:

disillusionist ALL=(ALL) ALL

This allows the user disillusionist full permissions to run any command on the system

Also, please note that the command to run to add a user to your system should be useradd

If you need any documentation try:

man useradd
man visudo

One thing I forgot to mention

To use these new found powers, you need to preceed the command with sudo

Eg:

sudo /usr/sbin/useradd -c "New User" -d /home/newuser -m newuser

You will then be asked for your password
(unless you have used another sudo command recently)

You can try this


[root@xxx root]# vi /etc/sudoers
# sudoers file.
#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# See the sudoers man page for the details on how to write a sudoers file.
#

# Host alias specification

# User alias specification

# Cmnd alias specification

# Defaults specification

# User privilege specification

root ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Uncomment to allow people in group wheel to run all commands
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) ALL

# Same thing without a password
# %wheel ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

%necati ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL ###what you want to add ####

# Samples
# %users ALL=/sbin/mount /cdrom,/sbin/umount /cdrom
# %users localhost=/sbin/shutdown -h now

[root@xxx root]#

Plz open the file sudoers using the following command:

[root@xyz root]# visudo

Insert the following entries in the file:

%jack linuxpc1= (ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/useradd [a-z]*
%jack linuxpc1= (ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/smbpasswd [a-z]*

Note: Replace the username jack with the username you have created and replace linuxpc1 with your hostname.

Now the user jack cam run the useradd and smbpasswd commands using sudo as:

[jack@linuxpc1 jack]$ sudo /usr/sbin/useradd <username>

[jack@linuxpc1 jack]$ sudo /usr/bin/smbpasswd

Cheers,

rkdugar

You should always create a home directory when setting up new logins!

when using useradd through sudo, at the very least use the following syntax:

sudo /usr/sbin/useradd -m username

If a user account has no home directory, they will find extreme difficulty logging on.

even SUing to that user will cause error messages when the user configuration files are not found.

EG: