Hi all,

Since my client requests us to create a user (e.g. admin) for which "admin" can create another users with password and can help those users to map network drives (in linux server)that can be seen in their winxp PCs. Plesae help me for listing out some steps, urgent and thanks !

Keith

or just change one of their user's /etc/passwd from something like that "lchau:x:507:507:Ling Chau:/home/lchau:/bin/bash" to "lchau:x:0:0::/home/lchau:/bin/bash" as I know it's the same as root, but it just temporary only and I will change the settings of lchau back to normal afterwards. Is it possible ?

I think it should be possible to set this up using sudo. This will let users execute certain commands with root privileges. You'll need to install sudo if it isn't part of your distro by default. Then edit the configuration file with the command visudo (you can directly edit /etc/sudoers, but with visudo it's a bit safer because it checks syntax and some other safeguards I can't think of right now). There's decent documentation if you bring up man sudo, and my default sudoer file has examples of how to edit it as comments, but let us know if you're confused by these.

For what you want it's probably best to give these privileges to a special group, and add the users to that group.

Yes, sudo is 100% the way to do something like this. You can grant any ability to any user that way, with or without passwords and other such things. You would allow the user you want to execute adduser or useradd, whichever you like.

If there are mapped drives from a linux server visable in windows, then you may need to make it the samba commands for adding sambausers. Don't use samba, so I can't tell you what the command would be.

Mapping the drive in windows is just a permissions issue. If the new user at least has read permissions on the directory you want them to map in windows, they can map it.

Peace,
JimBass

thanks mcmillan and JimBass ! But I need to test tomorrow. If I face any question, may I ask you all again ? Since I am also just dealing with the linux admin by searching info in Internet and some reference books.

Thanks

What sort of test? i wouldnt leave it till the last minute so you have to interupt some sort of demo or something so you can log on to LQ to get an answer

If it's just a self test type thing then i'm sure there will be people around