server-initializer/create-user.md

Creating a new user on your Linux server and configuring it for administrative tasks

1. Create a New User

• Log in to Your Server as the root user or a user with sudo privileges.
• Add a New User: sudo adduser newusername Replace newusername with the desired username.
• Follow the prompts to set the user's password and provide additional information.

2. Grant Sudo Privileges (Optional)

If you need the new user to have administrative privileges, add the user to the sudo group:

• Add User to the Sudo Group: sudo usermod -aG sudo newusername This command adds the user to the sudo group, which grants administrative permissions.

• Give user permissions for deployments: sudo sudo chown -R agala: /var/www/static /var/www/apps This command gives the user access to the deployment folders so scp file upload is posible

3. Configure SSH Access

• Switch to the New User: su - newusername
• Create SSH Directory and Authorized Keys:

  mkdir -p ~/.ssh
  chmod 700 ~/.ssh
  touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
  chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
  

• Add Your Public Key to authorized_keys:
  • Open authorized_keys in an editor: vim ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
  • Paste your SSH public key into the file

4. Configure SSH Access for New User

Ensure the new user can log in via SSH:

• Edit the SSH Configuration File (/etc/ssh/sshd_config): sudo vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config
• Verify or Add the Following Settings: PermitRootLogin no AllowUsers newusername PermitRootLogin no disables root login via SSH. AllowUsers newusername allows the new user to log in.
• Restart SSH Service: sudo systemctl restart ssh

5. Test SSH Access

• Log Out from the Root User or current session.
• Log In as the New User: ssh newusername@your_server_ip
• Verify that you can access the server with the new user.

6. Add Nginx user to new user group (Optional)

If we're trying to provide static content with nginx and the folder with it is inside another user folder (/home/user), you may need to provide the nginx user with read access to that folder.

• Locate the user folder where the static content is located.
• Give access to the nginx user to all the users folders

gpasswd -a www-data username

• Restart nginx

sudo systemctl restart nginx

6. Add user to Docker group (to execute docker commands)

sudo usermod -aG docker agala