Managing users on a Solaris system, a significant responsibility of a system administrator, includes creating, modifying, and deleting the user accounts on the system by using both the command and the GUI tools. In addition to learning how to accomplish this task, you will also explore the files in which the user accounts live after you create them. Furthermore, each user works on a system in a certain environment with a global component and a customized local component. We will explore the shell initialization files that are used to set up this environment when the user logs in.
The central issue to think about in this chapter is the Solaris 10 user administration. To understand user administration, we will explore three thought streams: the structure of a user account and how it is managed, the files in which the user accounts live, and the initialization files that are used to create the work environment for a user. In other words, you create and maintain a user account, the account information is stored into some files, and the initialization files create the work environment for a user when the user logs into the account that you created.