Account Information

You can look at and/or edit account information. On Fedora, select main menu->System Settings->Users and Groups to get the window shown in Figure 8-2.

Figure 8-2. Account management window.

Highlight an account and click Properties. The window in Figure 8-3 opens.

Figure 8-3. Account management window.

The home directory is a section of the file storage space that belongs to the account. No other user can access the home directory unless the account owner allows them to. Well, no one except root. Root can go anywhere and do anything. The most common location for the home directory is /home/accountname.

Click tabs in the window to see additional information about the account. Figure 8-4 shows the Account Info and Password Info screens.

Figure 8-4. Account and Password Info screens.

The Account Info screen allows you so enter an expiration date for the account. The Password Info screen allows you to set a password expiration date, forcing the user to change the password periodically. Both settings improve the security of systems that have a large number of users.

The Groups screen provides a list of all the existing groups on the system. Groups that the account is a member of are checked. You can check or uncheck any groups if needed. The groups shown in the figure were set up by Fedora during installation. It would be unwise to uncheck any group that Fedora checked.

Figure 8-5. List of groups.

Most distributions have similar utilities to manage accounts. SuSE has YaST, accessed at main menu->Control Center. Mandrake has a Control Center at System->Configuration->Configure your computer. Click System to see Users and Groups.