Virtual Private Server User Guide

User and Group Management

As a convenience, your VPS server includes special user groups that can perform 

many of the administrative tasks on the server, without the need for root access. 

There are, however, certain tasks that require the use of the root account.

User Accounts and User Groups

User accounts are the primary means of accessing your server. For security and 

tracking purposes, you should give each person with access to your server a 

unique user account. User accounts insulate users from one another, so that one 

user cannot affect another user or perform an action that may damage the 

system. User accounts also allow you to find out who is doing what, to prevent 

one user from reading mail meant for another, and so forth.

Your server provides three different types of user accounts. When you add a user 

to your system, you can give that user access to e mail only, to e mail and FTP, or 

to e mail, FTP and a shell. 

Basic User Management

User accounts can be managed either through command line tools or by using the 

VAdmin Web interface. This chapter focuses on user administration from the 

command line. See the the VAdmin User Guide for more information on 

performing Web based user administration.

From the command line, there are a number of super commands that are used to 

manage user accounts on your server:

Command: Description: 

vadduser 

Adds a new user account to your virtual server 

vlistuser 

Displays a list of the user accounts on your virtual server.  

vuserpriv 

Allows you to grant special privileges to users by making 

them members of the special user groups. 

vpasswd user 

Allows you to change the password for user, even if you 

don't know the user s current password. 

vrmuser 

Removes a user account from your virtual server.  

These commands are explained further in the following sections.

Creating User Accounts

You can create user accounts by using the vadduser command. Three separate 

account types can be created via the vadduser command:

Technical Training Department

August 2004

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