Administration – How to Name the ‘Admin’ User

administration

The ubuntu has user "root" of unlimited privileges, apparently, it exists to not be used. The "admin" is already taken by something.

So, assuming the computer is not connected into any sort of omnipresent domain with individual tracking of every person. What would be the default snappy name to slap onto account used for occasional administrative tasks on such computer?

To clarify: suppose there is non-sudoer account named "user" which is used most of the time. The first idea for admin account to pair up with that user is, well, "admin". That's out of possibility on ubuntu. Is there some other generic name for such accounts? I mean vocabulary is not exhausted by the 'root' and 'admin', but those are short, concise and most relevant. What substitutes to those if any, were coined by creators\ agreed by community?

Best Answer

On a default Ubuntu install (checked on my 16.04), the username admin should not be taken yet. However, there can be a system group named admin, which has similar effects as the sudo group. As every new user automatically gets assigned a primary group with the same name as the username, creating a user called admin might fail. It is not recommended to try that name therefore.

Anyway, I am not aware of any other common usernames that are recommended to be used for admin accounts except the obvious administrator and maybe toor (root spelled backwards).

Generally you are free in your name choice, as long as it does not contain any forbidden characters (use only lowercase letters, digits, dots, dashes and underscores). Just make sure your name is not taken yet.

Here's a command to list all existing user names and group names (duplicates eliminated) on your machine for comparison, so that you know what not to take:

grep -hPo '^.+?(?=:)' /etc/passwd /etc/group | sort -u

Just to point it out again, and "admin" user on Ubuntu does not mean a second root-like account. It means a normal unprivileged user account with the addition of some group memberships, like the sudo group which allows you to run commands as root using the sudo command, and a few other less relevant ones.

Related Solutions

Administration – Make Shutdown Not Require Admin Password

You do not need a workaround, just change the policy to allow you to shut down without authenticating as admin for shutdown and reboot when multiple users are logged in.

Edit the file /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.consolekit.policy using your favorite text editor. You will need root permissions.

Change the section relating to shutdown when others are logged in from

  <action id="org.freedesktop.consolekit.system.stop-multiple-users">
    <description>Stop the system when multiple users are logged in</description>
    <message>System policy prevents stopping the system when other users are logged in</message>
    <defaults>
      <allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
      <allow_active>auth_admin_keep</allow_active>
    </defaults>
  </action>

  <action id="org.freedesktop.consolekit.system.stop-multiple-users">
    <description>Stop the system when multiple users are logged in</description>
    <message>System policy prevents stopping the system when other users are logged in</message>
    <defaults>
      <allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
      <allow_active>yes</allow_active>
    </defaults>
  </action>

and the section relating to rebooting when others are logged in from

  <action id="org.freedesktop.consolekit.system.restart-multiple-users">
    <description>Restart the system when multiple users are logged in</description>
    <message>System policy prevents restarting the system when other users are logged in</message>
    <defaults>
      <allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
      <allow_active>auth_admin_keep</allow_active>
    </defaults>
  </action>

  <action id="org.freedesktop.consolekit.system.restart-multiple-users">
    <description>Restart the system when multiple users are logged in</description>
    <message>System policy prevents restarting the system when other users are logged in</message>
    <defaults>
      <allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
      <allow_active>yes</allow_active>
    </defaults>
  </action>

And that will allow you shutdown and reboot the PC when multiple users are logged in. Whether you want to do that is a different question.

Ubuntu – How to run applications using admin account while it is not in use or active

This website has some nice articles on setting up a media server, one of which is for a deluge daemon: http://havetheknowhow.com/Install-the-software/Install-Deluge-Headless.html

note: this ends up creating another user called 'deluge' and having the deluge daemon process running under that user, along with its permissions only. This way, you don't have to give up root access!

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Administration – Make Shutdown Not Require Admin Password

Ubuntu – How to run applications using admin account while it is not in use or active

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