Tuesday, March 11, 2014

How to add remove user (standard user/non-root) in Kali Linux and add them to sudoer ?

Add user in Kali Linux or other Linux:

  • First of all let’s confirm which version of Linux and Kernel I’m running.In command prompt type in
  • uname –a
    lsb_release –a
    How to add remove user - Standard usernon-root - in Kali Linux - blackMORE Ops -1
  • Now let’s add user. Open terminal and type following to create new user (replace user1 with your desired user name)
    useradd -m user1
    How to add remove user - Standard usernon-root - in Kali Linux - blackMORE Ops -2
    (Note: -m means create home directory which is usually /home/username)
  • Now set password for this user
    passwd user1
    Enter desired password twice
    How to add remove user - Standard usernon-root - in Kali Linux - blackMORE Ops -3
  • Add user to sudo group (to allow user to install software, allow printing, use privileged mode etc.)
    usermod -a -G sudo user1
    How to add remove user - Standard usernon-root - in Kali Linux - blackMORE Ops -4
    (Note: -a means append or add and –G mean to specified group/groups)
  • Change default shell of previously created user to bash
    chsh -s /bin/bash user1
    How to add remove user - Standard usernon-root - in Kali Linux - blackMORE Ops -5
    (Note: chsh mean change login shell, -s is the name of the specified shell you want for the user, in this case /bin/bash)
    Nice, all worked out as expected.
    Let’s logout and login back as our new Standard Non-root user (user1)

Login as new user

  • Once logged in, let’s confirm from command line who I really am! In terminal type in the following
    whoami
    How to add remove user - Standard usernon-root - in Kali Linux - blackMORE Ops -9
    Take note of user1@kali prompt. That also confirms who you are.
  • And let’s check my group affinity, type in the following in terminal:
    groups
    How to add remove user - Standard usernon-root - in Kali Linux - blackMORE Ops -10
    Looks good to me so far.
    I am part of user1 group (my primary) and sudo group. That means I can run privileged commands or just become root myself if required.
  • Become root!
    sudo su –
    and type in user1’s password to become root.
    How to add remove user - Standard usernon-root - in Kali Linux - blackMORE Ops -11
    See the prompt becomes root@kali instead of user1@kali. That means you’re now root and get to run anything Kali got to offer.
  • Lets confirm that using whoami command
    whoami
    How to add remove user - Standard usernon-root - in Kali Linux - blackMORE Ops -12
    So far so good. Now how do you delete a user?

Delete user in Kali Linux:


  • Log in as root user again. Open terminal and type:
    userdel –r user1
    (Note: -r means delete all files and home directory for user1)
    You can replace user1 with your desired user name.
    How to add remove user - Standard usernon-root - in Kali Linux - blackMORE Ops -13
    I have an error “user1 is currently used by process 5866”.
    So process ID 5866 is being used by user1. (I know that it’s the gnome-keyring process running in background when I used sudo su – command earlier. (Gnome-Keyring error is quite common in Debian when you install multiple Windows or Desktop Managers. There’s a separate guide see How to fix Gnome-Keyring error. This demonstrates how to fix gnome-keyring error for root user). In our case we are not worried as we just want to delete that user.
    Let do that.
  • Type in the following in terminal to kill the process used by user1.
    kill -9 5866
    This kills the process immediately.
    How to add remove user - Standard usernon-root - in Kali Linux - blackMORE Ops -14
    (Note: don’t kill root or system processes unless you know what you’re doing)
  • Now let’s try to delete the user again.
    userdel –r user1
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    We have a message. “userdel: user1 mail spool (/var/mail/user1) not found”.
    (Note: -r means delete all files and home directory for user1)
    Are we going to worry about it? Not really, we never created a mailbox for user1.
  • Just to confirm everything for user1 was deleted list files in home directory
    ls /home
    How to add remove user - Standard usernon-root - in Kali Linux - blackMORE Ops -16
    Nothing.. that’s good news, all files and folders were deleted for user1.
  • Want to double-check?
    su user1
    How to add remove user - Standard usernon-root - in Kali Linux - blackMORE Ops -17
    Perfect user1 was deleted successfully.

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