Administering user accounts

The Account Manager interface

The Account Manager allows you to create or modify user accounts. You can start the Account Manager in any of these ways:

Choose SCOadmin from the SCO menu (above the SCO logo) on the CDE desktop, then select Account Manager.
Start the SCOadmin launcher by entering scoadmin on the command-line, then selecting Account Manager.
Enter scoadmin account manager on the command-line (or abbreviate to scoadmin acc).

NOTE: You cannot run the SCOadmin Account Manager in an xterm on an NCD-19 system.

For more information on using SCOadmin managers, see ``Administering your system with SCOadmin''.

The main display of the Account Manager includes a list of accounts on the system. The icons (or characters) in the ``Status'' column indicate the type of account and its status. By default, the Status information is not displayed to keep startup time to a minimum. To display status information, select Options Show Status.

Account Manager status icons

This figure shows the characters which indicate the type of account and its status.

WARNING: If you have a large number of accounts on the system, the collection of status information takes a long time and will delay startup of the Account Manager. We recommend not using the Show Status selection under these circumstances.

You can display a list of groups on the system by selecting View By Groups. This view is used to modify groups. You must display the list of groups, before modifying existing groups.

You can display a list of users on the system by selecting View By Users. This view is used to modify users. You must display the list of users, before modifying existing users.

You can use the multi-column display by selecting View Columns. This allows you to select all the columns to be displayed or your own selection of columns. The user column is a compulsory column and cannot be deselected. The default columns selected for display are ID and Comment. In addition to other locales, accounts that use the system default locale from /etc/default/locale, are displayed in the Locale column.

The options selected for multi-column display are saved as the default settings, for the next Account Manager session.

You can use the multi-column sort by selecting View Sort. By default the display is sorted by User name. This allows you, for example, to sort the display according to the Locale, then by Group and finally by User name. To do this:

Move all the columns from the Sort Order list to the Columns list.
One at a time move Locale, Group and User to the Sort Order list.
Press OK.

The options selected for multi-column sort are saved as the default settings, for the next Account Manager session.

NOTE: When sorting by multiple columns, specify columns whose values are non-unique first, and specify columns whose values are unique last. For example, sorting by User ID followed by Group will give the same result as sorting by User ID only, because User IDs are all unique.

You can re-read the system account information and update the display by selecting Options Refresh. This is useful for picking up any changes made by administrative commands such as useradd(1M), usermod(1M), groupadd(1M) and groupmod(1M).