Managing User in Backtrack 5

Most command in the BackTrack 5 are same as Ubuntu or other common Linux I guess. So in this article, I would like to share some of the commands that are important in managing BackTrack’s users. If you are looking for how to add non-root or normal user in BackTrack, I already posted the tutorial in last few weeks.

How to login as other user in terminal

Open up your terminal. Then write the code as below:

su - <username>

This will change your current login user in the terminal to the <username> account. If you want to logout from the user, just type in exit.

How to change user password

Type in the terminal passwd. It will prompt you to change the current user password. If you are the root and would like to change other users password, type in:

passwd - <username>.

Adding a new group in Backtrack

Type in groupadd <groupname> is sufficient enough.

How to create another root user

If you want to add another user with root privilege, you can just edit the user’s group. You may edit the user’s primary group as root or add group root as the user’s secondary group. But as for me, this is a bad practise of security. Why would you want to have several root users?

usermod -g <primarygroupname> -G <secondarygroupname> <username>

How to rename/change a username

usermod -l <new-username> <old-username>

The name of the user will be change from OLD-USERNAME to NEW-USERNAME. In particular, the users home directory name should probably be changed manually to reflect the new login name. So, you may login using the new username after changing it.

That is it for now. Do ask if you have something in mind or leave comment if you please.