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UNIX Sysadmin Boot Camp: User Management
Now that you’re an expert when it comes to bash, logs, SSH, and passwords, you’re probably foaming at the mouth to learn some new skills. While I can’t equip you with the “nunchuck skills” or “bowhunting skills” Napoleon Dynamite reveres, I can help you learn some more important — though admittedly less exotic — user management skills in UNIX.
Root User
The root user — also known as the “super user” — has absolute control over everything on the server. Nothing is held back, nothing is restricted, and anything can be done. Only the server administrator should have this kind of access to the server, and you can see why. The root user is effectively the server’s master, and the server accordingly will acquiesce to its commands.
Broad root access should be avoided for the sake of security. If a program or service needs extensive abilities that are generally reserved for the root user, it’s best to grant those abilities on a narrow, as-needed basis.
Creating New Users
Because the Sysadmin Boot Camp series is geared toward server administration from a command-line point of view, that’s where we’ll be playing today. Tasks like user creation can be performed fairly easily in a control panel environment, but it’s always a good idea to know the down-and-dirty methods as a backup.
The useradd command is used for adding users from shell. Let’s start with an example and dissect the pieces:
useradd -c "admin" -d /home/username -g users\ -G admin,helpdesk -s\ /bin/bash userid
-c "admin" – This command adds a comment to the user we’re creating. The comment in this case is “admin,” which may be used to differentiate the user a little more clearly for better user organization.-d /home/username – This block sets the user’s home directory. The most common approach is to replace username with the username designated at the end of the command.-g users\ – Here, we’re setting the primary group for the user we’re creating, which will be users.-G admin,helpdesk – This block specifies other user groups the new user may be a part of.-s\ /bin/bash userid – This command is in two parts. It says that the new user will use /bin/bash for its shell and that userid will be the new user’s username.
Changing Passwords
Root is the only user that can change other users’ passwords. The command to do this is:
passwd userid
If you are a user and want to change your own password, you would simply issue the passwd command by itself. When you execute the command, you will be prompted for a new entry. This command can also be executed by the root user to change the root password.
Deleting Users
The command for removing users is userdel, and if we were to execute the command, it might look like this:
userdel -r username
The –r designation is your choice. If you choose to include it, the command will remove the home directory of the specified user.
Where User Information is Stored
The /etc/passwd file contains all user information. If you want to look through the file one page at a time — the way you’d use /p in Windows — you can use the more command:
more /etc/passwd
Keep in mind that most of your important configuration files are going to be located in the /etc folder, commonly spoken with an “et-see” pronunciation for short. Each line in the passwd file has information on a single user. Arguments are segmented with colons, as seen in the example below:
username:password:12345:12345::/home/username:/bin/bash
Argument 1 – username – the user’s username
Argument 2 – password – the user’s password
Argument 3 – 12345 – the user’s numeric ID
Argument 4 – 12345 – the user group’s numeric ID
Argument 5 – "" – where either a comment or the user’s full name would go
Argument 6 – /home/username – the user’s home directory
Argument 7 – /bin/bash – the user’s default console shell
Now that you’ve gotten a crash course on user management, we’ll start going deeper into group management, more detailed permissions management and the way shadow file relates to the passwd usage discussed above.
-Ryan
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When Words Collide: Hosting v. The Cloud
If you keep an eye on @theplanet on Twitter, you know that last week, a few of us were repping The Planet in Washington, D.C., at the Fall 2010 Channel Partners Conference and Expo. The weather was perfect, the expo hall was packed with people, and our booth got great traffic … pretty much all you can hope for at a trade show.
As my title would suggest, I love talking about all the good stuff happening at The Planet, and in a trade show setting, I have plenty of opportunities. I get to share a little about our company and hear some of the cool things the booth’s visitors are doing in their businesses.
Sometimes, attendees know what they need and why they should talk to us. Other times, we’re the next booth in the aisle, and they want to try and talk to everyone while ‘trick or treating’ for cool swag. Counterintuitively, I get to share the most about what we do with that second group of folks, and I’ve noticed those conversations can get pretty adventuresome.
We’re surrounded by the world of hosting day-in and day-out, so it’s easy to forget that it’s still a pretty foreign concept to some folks … even to businesspeople and entrepreneurs in other areas of technology. At Channel Partners, I had to step back a few times and restart from a higher “hosting in general” place before diving into how The Planet meets our customers’ needs as a hosting provider. The interaction might look like this:
The Planet: We do hosting.
Attendee: Oh, so do you have a cloud?
The Planet: Absolutely. Our cloud is designed for production with *insert Server Cloud differentiators*
Attendee: What kinds of servers do you have in the cloud?
The Planet: Let’s back up a second … What do you mean when you talk about “the cloud?”
Attendee: You know … I send all the data off and I don’t have to mess with any of the hardware.
At that point, we’re on the same page. We can talk about the The Planet as a very general “cloud” by the attendee’s definition and how our specific cloud product is a specialized product that abstracts the hardware at the next level. From there, we can talk about what their business needs, the products we have that will meet those needs, and what they can do to learn more.
Success in the those kinds of interactions requires establishing a level foundation that we can build upon. Terms like “hosting,” “cloud” and “virtualization,” are loaded with buzz these days, so more often than not, the best way to talk about them is to lay out a definition and move forward from there.
Are there any other buzz words you don’t understand or that you think have too many definitions?
-Kevin
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Encima y Más Allá
Hola y buenos dias, me llamo Yhonit Flores. Trabajo en el departamento de soporte tecnico del ‘El Planeta.’ Hace unos dias tome el tiempo para hablar con el V.P. de cuidado de clientes sobre nuestro soporte en español y aun que no tenemos soporte en español, me dijeron que podria hacer lo yo mismo.
Asi es que, me da gusto en informarles, que yo — a lado de otros tecnicos — si es que puedan, vamos a poder dar soporte en español. Toda via no hay soporte oficial en Español, pero consideren este mi “nooficial” oficial suporte en espanol.
Si ud requiere sorpote en español, favor de sentirce libre de llamar y preguntar por me o mandar un ticket en Español y pedir que yo lo trabaje o cual quier otro tecnico que pueda hablar y escribir Español. Pero, puede talves tomara un poco mas de tiempo en recibir una respuesta, porque no todos pueden hablar en español.
Miro adelante en ayudarle con sus necesidades de soporte tecnico.
Y gracias otra vez por elegirnos a nosotros
En Inglés
My name is Yhonit Flores, and I work in The Planet technical support department. I recently spoke with our VP of customer care about providing support in Spanish to our customers, even though our only official support language is English.
And now, I’m happy to inform you — our great customers — that technicians can provide you with Spanish-language support if they are able. Because there is still no “official” Spanish support, you can consider this our unofficial-official Spanish support.
Simply ask for me, or send in a ticket in Spanish and request to have it worked by any technician able to speak the language. Keep in mind there may be a delay in response, since not everyone can provide Spanish support.
Thanks again for choosing us as your hosting provider, and I look forward to helping you with your support needs!
- Yhonit
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Partnering with The Planet: Never Been Easier
The Planet Partner Program drives business to The Planet and makes money for our partners.
That’s a pretty straightforward mission statement.
We have reseller, referral and affiliate programs to enable execution of that mission statement for anyone and everyone, and our goal is to make participation easy. We’ve already talked about which partner program fits you best, so in this post, I want to highlight an exciting promotion we just announced for our Referral Partner Program.
In the month of September, registered referral partners have incentives on an even broader range of contract terms: In addition to standard monthly recurring payments for contracts of 12 months or longer, referral partners can receive commissions for month–to–month agreements and six–month contracts.
I’m a pretty “go with the flow” kind of guy. Give me my family, my friends and University of Texas Longhorn football, and I’m set. The fact that I value simplicity so much might be why I’m so excited we’re introducing this new flexibility into our program. Long-term contracts are not always a fit for our partners and the customers they refer, so we’ve listened and created options to meet them where they are.
So what does that mean for you?
- If you’re an existing referral partner, you can take advantage of these promotional terms immediately. Just contact your channel manager or send a note to partnerplus@theplanet.com.
- If you aren’t currently a partner but this post is music to your ears, head over to our Partner Referral Form to get the ball rolling on your first referral.
- If you want to learn more about the Referral Program and how your business can take advantage of it, drop us a line at partnerplus@theplanet.com.
-Drew
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Is Your Data Endangered?
In the 240 posts that have been published on The Planet Blog to date, one of the most consistent themes has been the importance of data protection. If you’ve been around our blog for a while, you’ll be able to rattle off different backup strategies and new technologies that can keep your data safe. If you’re new to the scene, here are a few backup-related gems that can help you catch up:
- The Planet Storage Cloud: FYI
- Know Thy Backups – Part II
- Know Thy Backups – Part I
- Your Business Depends on Your Backup
- Tech Tips From the Trenches
- 7 Server Preparation Tips
- What is Data Protection?
- It’s Always Bigger in Texas
- Backup Solutions
Unfortunately, having “book knowledge” (or in this case “blog knowledge”) about backups and applying that knowledge faithfully and regularly are not necessarily one and the same. Regardless of how many times you hear it or read it, if you aren’t actively protecting your data, YOU SHOULD BE.
Here are a few questions to help you determine whether your data is endangered:
- Is your data backed up?
- How often is your data backed up?
- How often do you test your backups?
- Is your data backed up externally from your server?
- Are your backups in another data center?
- Are your backups in another city?
- Are your backups stored with a different provider?
- Do you have local backups?
- Are your backups backed up?
- How many people in your organization know where your backups are and how to restore them?
- What’s the greatest amount of data you might lose in the event of a server crash before your next backup?
- What is the business impact of that data being lost?
- If your server were to crash and the hard drives were unrecoverable, how long would it take you to restore all of your data?
- What is the business impact of your data being lost or inaccessible for the length of time you answered in the last question?
We can all agree that the idea of backups and data protection is a great one, but when it comes to investing in that idea, some folks change their tune. While each of the above questions has a “good” answer when it comes to keeping your data safe, your business might not need “good” answers to all of them for your data to be backed up sufficiently. You should understand the value of your data to your business and invest in its protection accordingly.
For example, a million-dollar business running on a single server will probably value its backups more highly than a hobbyist with a blog she contributes to once every year and a half. The million-dollar business should probably have more “good” answers than the hobbyist, so the business should invest more in the protection of its data than the hobbyist.
If you haven’t taken time to quantify the business impact of losing your primary data (questions 11-14), sit down with a pencil and paper and write out your answers. Do any of those answers make you want to change your approach to backups or your investment in protecting your data?
The funny thing about backups is that you don’t need them until you NEED them, and when you NEED them, you’ll usually want to kick yourself if you don’t have them.
Don’t end up kicking yourself.
-Kevin
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NFL + The Internet = Fantasy Football
It’s the end of August. That means one thing: Fantasy Football.
The NFL regular season kicks off September 9 in New Orleans, so these last few weeks of August have been abuzz with scouting reports, insider tips and sophisticated drafts all across the country. While I might have a bit more history with the NFL than my coworkers, when the season (and the smack talk) starts, that experience doesn’t mean much if my fantasy team comes up short on Tuesday morning.
I manage to play in a few fantasy leagues every year, and I’m always looking for an edge: from making draft selections to benching players in a given week to negotiating trades with my opponents. That’s why I turned to one of The Planet’s customers for help. Footballguys has trusted us to host their infrastructure for quite a few years now, so I return that trust in a small way by living on their fantasy football site during the months of August and September.
It looks like I’m not the only one:
It goes without saying that they must have a pretty good hosting provider to be able to handle those huge influxes of traffic. 
A few of my coworkers still buy fantasy football magazines and rely on a healthy dose of ESPN to prepare for the season, but with fantasy football’s huge popularity surge in recent years, everyone seems to be shifting toward online outlets for the latest news and stats. Time is of the essence when a top draft pick gets sidelined for the season or a new standout emerges from the pack, and depending on how you respond, it can make or break your season. When your pride is on the line, it’s important to have reliable resources keeping you up to date.
Because Kevin just featured a few of our customers who are doing some exciting things on our infrastructure, I wanted to send Footballguys.com some love with its own blog post. If you’ve already got your team drafted, check out their free Rate My Team application, and if you can’t get enough fantasy facts and stats, grab their iPhone app to take the info on the road.
-Keith
P.S. If you happen to be one of my fantasy league competitors, please disregard this blog post. Footballguys.com is a cool site, but they don’t want to help you beat me.
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Citizens of The Planet Speak Up
If you’ve clicked around our site since its latest redesign, you’ve probably noticed the “Citizen of The Planet” theme. When you navigate to theplanet.com, you’re greeted with our value proposition:
It’s Your Planet. Host It Your Way.
Technology that saves you money
Management options that save you time
Expert support that lets you sleep
When a visitor, customer or potential customer hits our site, our goal is to evoke a “That’s what I’ve been looking for!” sigh of relief. We make those promises because we know they’re what our customers care about the most. We also know we can back up all of those promises. The problem with making those kinds of bold claims is that the savvy Internet surfer is far too cynical to take any company at its word.
That’s why, in subsequent frames of our rotating header, we stopped. We instead handed the microphone to our customers to tell you what they think:
Even if you’re not familiar with REALworkspaces, Dynapp, Integrity Host or NetBroadcasting.tv, the fact that they’re not sporting “ThePlanet.com” in their signature is pretty refreshing. These customers run their own businesses, and those businesses trust and rely on The Planet.
Because we didn’t want a dozen frames cycling on the front page, we selected a few to feature. That was no easy task. I grabbed the customer testimonial videos and added them to a playlist here so you can have a one-stop shop for some cool success stories:
[See post to watch the Flash video]
Needless to say, we’re as excited about having these folks as our customers as they are about having The Planet as their hosting provider. If you have a few minutes and you’re interested in seeing a cross-section of the kinds of businesses that are powered by The Planet, click on this “link love”:
- Atitude Digital Media — http://atitude.com.br/
- AttainResponse — http://attainresponse.com/
- ContentActive — http://www.contentactive.com/
- The DJ Booth — http://www.djbooth.net/
- Dynapp — http://dynapp.com/
- eCarList —http://www.ecarlist.com/
- Integrity Host — http://www.integrityhost.com/
- NetBroadcasting.tv — http://netbroadcasting.tv/
- omNovia — http://www.omnovia.com/
- Q Point Technology — http://www.truesafe.net/
- REALworkspaces — http://REALworkspaces.com
- The Sant Corporation — http://www.santcorp.com/
- Speed FC — http://www.speedfc.com/
- Stone Bond Technologies — http://www.stonebond.com/
- Venali — http://www.fax.venali.com/
If The Planet powers your business and you want to share your success, let us know! We’d love to help you tell your story.
-Kevin
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Season 4: The Sabbatical Years
Mike Brown’s Planets is back. After a long break at the conclusion of Season 3 (I define these Seasons after the fact: if I haven’t written anything in a while I declare it to have been because, clearly. it is the end of the season), the writing will now resume. This season is destined to be the most exciting of all for the simple fact that it also coincides with my current sabbatical, which started last week and lasts for the next 6 months.
My sabbatical will be a funny thing. While most people take the opportunity to take their families to glamorous places and work in exciting new labs, I am taking the opportunity to spend more time in my comfy green chair at home, writing. Diane refers to it as my staybbatical, which I guess is about right. And, after a few days of tidying up loose ends from my office, I am finally here, sitting in the green chair. Let Season 4 commence.
Here are some of the things I am working on:
- Heading south: 5 years after the discovery of the last dwarf planets, the race has finally commenced to scan the southern hemisphere. The 3 competing teams have familiar players. Who is going to win? I have predictions.
- Guest posts: As an experiment I am conscripting some younger students and postdocs to write about what they do. First up: Amino acids on Titan. Stay tuned.
- Where is Planet X hiding? Just in time for making your plans for 2012, I’ll critically review what might still be left lurking in the outskirts of the solar system, and I’ll tell you the probability that it will affect us in 2012. Well, OK, you can probably answer that one already.
- Sedna is 7, and she still makes less sense than Lilah, who is only 5.
- Why Pluto still matters. Nearly 5 years after no longer being a planet Pluto still actually matters. You never thought you would hear me say that, did you?
- Nobody wants to go to the moon anymore. So maybe that means I should go to the moon.
My staybbatical won’t be entirely in my green chair, though. I will admit to having volunteered to be a chaperone on almost all of Lilah’s kindergarten field trips. I even signed up to help with quilting for 5 year olds (they insisted that all I need to know how to do is tie knots; which I do). But also look out for The Wacky Adventures of a Scientist on a Book Tour. Coming soon, to a city (possibly) near you. It should be a fun six months.
Presentation on Economic Data Needed for EBM by Linwood Pendleton of Duke University
Date:
Thursday, October 28, 2010
Presentation on Economic Data Needed for EBM by Linwood Pendleton of Duke University (October 28, 2010 at 2 pm US EDT/11 am US PDT). EBM has the potential to substantially improve human welfare, especially through the contribution of ecosystem services to economic values and activities. Many EBM practitioners recognize the need to better understand the economic components of their ecosystem. More and more EBM efforts include the collection and analysis of economic data. Determining what economic information to collect and how to collect it remains a challenge. In this webinar, we will examine different types of economic information, research, analysis, and modeling that should prove useful for better EBM. The uses and limitations of different types of economic data are considered. We also delve into the use and development of economic indicators for EBM monitoring and evaluation. Register for this webinar at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/478160904.
N.C. student says nose piercing religious – UPI.com
 MiamiHerald.com | N.C. student says nose piercing religious UPI.com ... of Body Modification, which she says encourages piercings and tattoos as a path to spiritual enlightenment, The (Charlotte) News & Observer reported. ... Student suspended over piercing files suit against school board, officialsNews & Observer |
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Book Excerpt: Everything Must Change
Brian D. McLaren with three examples of the kind of metaphors Jesus might use today if he were confronting our security, equity, and prosperity systems.
Book Excerpt: Zen Computer
Philip Toshio Sudo's meditation on the meanings suggested by some keys on a computer keyboard.