How can I manipulate user accounts, and still retain security?
most distributions contain a great number of tools to change the properties of user accounts. • The pwconv and unpwconv programs can be used to convert between shadow and non-shadowed passwords. • The pwck and grpck programs can be used to verify proper organization of the passwd and group files. • The useradd, usermod, and userdel programs can be used to add, delete and modify user accounts. The groupadd, groupmod, and groupdel programs will do the same for groups. • Group passwords can be created using gpasswd. All these programs are “shadow-aware” — that is, if you enable shadow they will use /etc/shadow for password information, otherwise they won’t. See the respective man pages for further information.
