I edited /etc/passwd, but the changes didn't seem to take place. Why?
If you edit /etc/passwd directly, your changes will be lost. OpenBSD generates /etc/passwd dynamically with pwd_mkdb(8). The main password file in OpenBSD is /etc/master.passwd. According to pwd_mkdb(8),
FILES
/etc/master.passwd current password file
/etc/passwd a 6th Edition-style password file
/etc/pwd.db insecure password database file
/etc/pwd.db.tmp temporary file
/etc/spwd.db secure password database file
/etc/spwd.db.tmp temporary file
In a traditional Unix password file, such as /etc/passwd, everything including the user's encrypted password is available to anyone on the system (and is a prime target for programs such as Crack). 4.4BSD introduced the master.passwd file, which has an extended format (with additional options beyond those provided by /etc/passwd) and is only readable by root. For faster access to data, the library calls which access this data normally read /etc/pwd.db and /etc/spwd.db.
OpenBSD does come with a tool with which you should edit your password file. It is called vipw(8). Vipw will use vi (or your favourite editor defined per $EDITOR) to edit /etc/master.passwd. After you are done editing, it will re-create /etc/passwd, /etc/pwd.db, and /etc/spwd.db as per your changes. Vipw also takes care of locking these files, so that if anyone else attempts to change them at the same time, they will be denied access.
What is the best way to add and delete users?
OpenBSD provides two commands for easily adding users to the system:
- adduser(8)
- user(8)
You can also add users by hand, using vipw(8), but this is more difficult for most operations.
The easiest way to add a user in OpenBSD is to use the adduser(8) script. You can configure adduser(8) by editing /etc/adduser.conf. adduser(8) allows for consistency checks on /etc/passwd, /etc/group, and shell databases. It will create the entries and $HOME directories for you. It can even send a message to the user welcoming them. Here is an example user, testuser, being added to a system. He/she will be given the $HOME directory /home/testuser, made a member of the group guest, and given the shell /bin/ksh.
# adduser
Use option ``-silent'' if you don't want to see all warnings and
questions.
Reading /etc/shells
Reading /etc/login.conf
Check /etc/master.passwd
Check /etc/group
Ok, let's go.
Don't worry about mistakes. I will give you the chance later to correct any input.
Enter username []: testuser
Enter full name []: Test FAQ User
Enter shell csh ksh nologin sh [sh]: ksh
Uid [1002]: Enter
Login group testuser [testuser]: guest
Login group is ``guest''. Invite testuser into other groups: guest no
[no]: no
Login class auth-defaults auth-ftp-defaults daemon default staff
[default]: Enter
Enter password []: Type password, then Enter
Enter password again []: Type password, then Enter
Name: testuser
Password: ****
Fullname: Test FAQ User
Uid: 1002
Gid: 31 (guest)
Groups: guest
Login Class: default
HOME: /home/testuser
Shell: /bin/ksh
OK? (y/n) [y]: y
Added user ``testuser''
Copy files from /etc/skel to /home/testuser
Add another user? (y/n) [y]: n
Goodbye!
To delete users you should use the rmuser(8) utility. This will remove all existence of a user. It will remove any crontab(1) entries, their $HOME dir (if it is owned by the user), and their mail. Of course it will also remove their /etc/passwd and /etc/group entries. Next is an example of removing the user that was added above. Notice you are prompted for the name, and whether or not to remove the user's home directory.
# rmuser
Enter login name for user to remove: testuser
Matching password entry:
testuser:$2a$07$ZWnBOsbqMJ.ducQBfsTKUe3PL97Ve1AHWJ0A4uLamniLNXLeYrEie:1002
:31::0:0:Test FAQ User:/home/testuser:/bin/ksh
Is this the entry you wish to remove? y
Remove user's home directory (/home/testuser)? y
Updating password file, updating databases, done.
Updating group file: done.
Removing user's home directory (/home/testuser): done.
Adding users via user(8)
These tools are less interactive than the adduser(8) command, which makes them easier to use in scripts.
The full set of tools is:
- group(8)
- groupadd(8)
- groupdel(8)
- groupinfo(8)
- groupmod(8)
- user(8)
- useradd(8)
- userdel(8)
- userinfo(8)
- usermod(8)
Actually adding users
Being that user(8) is not interactive, the easiest way to add users efficiently is to use the adduser(8) command. The actual command /usr/sbin/user is just a frontend to the rest of the /usr/sbin/user* commands. Therefore, the following commands can be added by using user add or useradd, its your choice as to what you want, and doesn't change the use of the commands at all.
In this example, we are adding the same user with the same specifications as the user that was added above. useradd(8) is much easier to use if you know the default setting before adding a user. These settings are located in /etc/usermgmt.conf and can be viewed by doing so:
$ user add -D
group users
base_dir /home
skel_dir /etc/skel
shell /bin/csh
inactive 0
expire Null (unset)
range 1000..60000
The above settings are what will be set unless you specify different with command line options. For example, in our case, we want the user to go to the group guest, not users. One more little hurdle with adding users, is that passwords must be specified on the commandline. This is, the encrypted passwords, so you must first use the encrypt(1) utility to create the password. For example: OpenBSD's passwords by default use the Blowfish algorithm for 6 rounds. Here is an example line to create an encrypted password to specify to useradd(8).
$ encrypt -p -b 6
Enter string:
$2a$06$YOdOZM3.4m6MObBXjeZtBOWArqC2.uRJZXUkOghbieIvSWXVJRzlq
Now that we have our encrypted password, we are ready to add the user.
# user add -p '$2a$06$YOdOZM3.4m6MObBXjeZtBOWArqC2.uRJZXUkOghbieIvSWXVJRzlq' -u 1002 \
-s /bin/ksh -c "Test FAQ User" -m -g guest testuser
Note: Make sure to use ' ' (single quotes) around the password string, not " " (double quotes) as the shell will interpret these before sending it to user(8). In addition to that, make sure you specify the -m option if you want the user's home directory created and the files from /etc/skel copied over.
To see that the user was created correctly, we can use many different utilities. Below are a few commands you can use to quickly check that everything was created correctly.
$ ls -la /home total 14 drwxr-xr-x 5 root wheel 512 May 12 14:29 . drwxr-xr-x 15 root wheel 512 Apr 25 20:52 .. drwxr-xr-x 24 ericj wheel 2560 May 12 13:38 ericj drwxr-xr-x 2 testuser guest 512 May 12 14:28 testuser $ id testuser uid=1002(testuser) gid=31(guest) groups=31(guest) $ finger testuser Login: testuser Name: Test FAQ User Directory: /home/testuser Shell: /bin/ksh Last login Sat Apr 22 16:05 (EDT) on ttyC2 No Mail. No Plan.
In addition to these commands, user(8) provides its own utility to show user characteristics, called userinfo(8).
$ userinfo testuser login testuser passwd * uid 1002 groups guest change Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969 class gecos Test FAQ User dir /home/testuser shell /bin/ksh expire Wed Dec 31 19:00:00 1969
Removing users
To remove users with the user(8) hierarchy of commands, you will use userdel(8). This is a very simple, yet usable command. To remove the user created in the last example, simply:
# userdel -r testuser
Notice the -r option, which must be specified if you want the users home directory to be deleted as well. Alternatively, you can specify -p and not -r and this will lock the user's account, but not remove any information.
How do I create an ftp-only account (not anonymous FTP!)?
There are a few ways to do this, but a very common way to do such is to add "/usr/bin/false" into "/etc/shells". Then when you set a users shell to "/usr/bin/false", they will not be able log in interactively, but will be able to use ftp capabilities. You may also want to restrict access by Confining users to their home directory in ftpd.
Setting up Quotas
Quotas are used to limit user's space that they have available to them on your disk drives. It can be very helpful in situations where you have limited resources. Quotas can be set by user and/or by group.
The first step to setting up quotas is to make sure that "option QUOTA" is in your Kernel Configuration. This option is in the GENERIC kernel. After this, you need to mark in /etc/fstab the filesystems which will have quotas enabled. The keywords userquota and groupquota should be used to mark each filesystem that you will be using quotas on. By default, the files quota.user and quota.group will be created at the root of that filesystem to hold the quota information. This default can be overridden by specifying the file name with the quota option in /etc/fstab, such as "userquota=/var/quotas/quota.user". Here is an example /etc/fstab that has one filesystem with userquotas enabled, and the quota file in a non-standard location:
/dev/wd0a / ffs rw,userquota=/var/quotas/quota.user 1 1
Now it's time to set the user's quotas. To do so you use the utility edquota(8). A simple use is just "edquota <user>". edquota(8) will use vi(1) to edit the quotas unless the environmental variable EDITOR is set to a different editor. For example:
# edquota ericj
This will give you output similar to this:
Quotas for user ericj:
/: blocks in use: 62, limits (soft = 0, hard = 0)
inodes in use: 25, limits (soft = 0, hard = 0)
To add limits, edit it to give results like this:
Quotas for user ericj:
/: blocks in use: 62, limits (soft = 1000, hard = 1050)
inodes in use: 25, limits (soft = 0, hard = 0)
Note that the quota allocation is in 1k blocks. In this case, the softlimit is set to 1000k, and the hardlimit is set to 1050k. A softlimit is a limit where the user is just warned when they cross it and have until their grace period is up to get their disk usage below their limit. Grace periods can be set by using the -t option on edquota(8). After the grace period is over the softlimit is handled as a hardlimit. This usually results in an allocation failure.
Now that the quotas are set, you need to turn the quotas on. To do this use quotaon(8). For example:
# quotaon -a
This will go through /etc/fstab to turn on the filesystems with quota options. Now that quotas are up and running, you can view them using quota(1). Using a command of "quota <user>" will give that user's information. When called with no arguments, the quota(1) command will give your quota statistics. For example:
# quota ericj
Will result in output similar to this:
Disk quotas for user ericj (uid 1001):
Filesystem blocks quota limit grace files quota limit grace
/ 62 1000 1050 27 0 0
By default quotas set in /etc/fstab will be started on boot. To turn them off use
# quotaoff -a