This has been a problem for me for a while now and I've never found the time to address it. I have a Mdk10 machine (but same thing happened with earlier versions) that I administer remotely using putty. When I try to use drakconf (mcc) to check or make changes to users, I get stuck in a loop. Don't ask why I keep trying it... I guess I just forget about this quirk and absent-mindedly try to use it again. What happens is, when I choose "Users and Groups" from the main menu, it automatically goes into "add user" mode. Well, I don't want to *add* a user - I want to *change* one.... but there's no exit command that I can see. So I end up starting another terminal session and killing the process to get out of it. Now why is there no exit command, and why does it assume I want to add a user and not give me any other choices in that first screen? Should I be using a different tool to view/change user accounts? TIA.

I prefer the Webmins users modification module. The best thing is can be run from any browser.

I have reasons for wanting to use the mcc. For one, my security settings don't allow using webmin. As much as I appreciate others opinions about better tools, if someone could tell me what's going on with *this* tool, that would be even more appreciated.

If you open a terminal and use su to change to root, does the 'drakuser' program do the same thing?? If it does, the users on your system should be listed on the bottom half of the new window. Just double click on one to change their details.

drakuser can also be startd from the prgram menu... System | Configuration | Other | User Administration

Yes I do su to root first, but I don't think you understood my question. I am not using a gui -- I am using PuTty to establish a CLI terminal session and then running drakconf from there. I can't point and click, as I'm using a different interface than the one you're thinking of, with different options.

aaaah, apologies..... <tootles downstairs to other pc and opens putty and expriments>

Mandrake control centre (mcc) in text mode is similar to the post install configuration you went through when setting up your pc. You can't change users info with it after they've been added because the program doesn't do that. You can use 'usermod' as root to modify users information. The graphical programs are just front ends for useradd/groupadd/passwd/usermod.

Thanks for the clarification. I couldn't find that info anywhere that I looked. I knew I could use usermod or groupmod to make changes, but it appears to lack the ability to just view the current configuration (of users or groups) and I was hoping to be able to use the menu driven mcc for that. From what you're saying, I can't get there from here with either method. To simply view existing user/group settings, is there another command line I should be looking at? If I 'man usermod' it doesn't look like there's any option to just query the settings. I know I can do some things like 'groups username' to get the list of groups for a particular user, but there's no other utility to show all that info in one place unless I'm using the x-utils?