After you ceate a new user, from the command line, how do you authorize that user access to them modem? or... even other files or directories?

In netcfg there is an option to allow users to control the interface.

In this case it will be the ppp interface.

#netcfg

click on interfaces

select the ppp0 interface and hit edit

or doubleclick the ppp0 interface

select the allow any user to (de)activate interface

users have default permissions unless you add them to a user group that has more permissions.

You may want to check out the usermod command

DP... i tried netcfg and its not in my bundle. I also notice yu use RH as im sure netcfg is a RH thang or at least sounds like it.

Im intrigued tell me more about usermod...

by the way, what part of south alabama yu live in?
i used to live in chickasaw, saraland, and satsuma way back in the day until i moved up here to georgia. Just curious

Saraland, but I am from Mobile.



You may be able to dig around here for answers


http://axion.physics.ubc.ca/ppp-linux.html

there is a section called SUID that will do what you want.

chmod a+rx /usr/sbin/pppd

chmod +s /usr/sbin/pppd

chmod a+rw /dev/ttyS1

(If you have users who you do not want using your modems, edit /etc/group and insert a line like
ppp::25:<Comma separated List of names of users>
where the List of users is a comma separated list of the users you want to allow use of ppp. The group number -- 25 in the above example-- is arbitrary, but should not be the same as any other group in /etc/group. Then do
chown root.ppp /usr/sbin/pppd
chmod o-rx /usr/sbin/pppd
in addition to the above changes.)

If you have usermod try running it with no args for a list, it is used to set group, home directory, password, and other things pertaining to a user.