I have just started to use Scientific Linux (7.0) (although I assume this question might be distribution neutral..). The kernel version is 3.10.0-123.20.1.el7.x86_64.
Coming back to my question.
I switched to root
account and from there created an new user account test-account
using the command adduser test-account
. It didn't prompt me for a password neither did I use the option to provide password. So I guess it's a "without password" account. I can login into this account from root account – which I suppose I'd be able to without providing password even if the test account had a password. However when I try to login into this(test-account) from a third account – it prompts me for password. And just pressing Enter
doesn't work.
Is it possible to login into this account from a non-root account. Is there a way (without switching to root or using sudo
) ?
Best Answer
By default on enterprise GNU/Linux and its derivatives, the
adduser
command creates a user which is disabled until you explicitly specify a password for that user.Here is an example on CentOS 6.5, which should be the same as Scientific Linux.
that's because in the
/etc/shadow
file, the password field is!!
, as you can see in the example.Once you run
passwd
for this account, it will change the user's password and allow the user to be able to login.So what you should be able to do is the following to have a user without a password, simply create an account then delete the password.
now any user should be able to use
su
and login as the usertest
in my example. You will not have to usesudo
to login as the account.Although this is possible and you can have an account without a password, it is not advised. If you simply set the password for the user, you should be allowed to login.