Conclusion
You just learned the basics of how Linux uses the abstractions of users and groups to manage and control processes, files, and other resources on a system. Just as importantly, you learned the basic commands you need to create and manage users and groups on a real system. You learned about the important difference between the root user and all of the other normal users on a system.
Then, we walked through a practical exercise where you created a user, added a group to the system, modified that user, and then cleaned up all the resources you created.
Finally, we went beyond the day-to-day commands to show you that there’s no magic behind the scenes here: it’s all just plaintext files that define users and groups on a Unix system. This is a good thing; it’s going to make your life as a developer easy, whether you’re:
- Creating a Docker image to run your application as a specific non-root user.
- Setting up a long-running cloud...
