[wplug] finding all users & groups

[Jonathan Billings]

jacob.hammerschmitt at pnc.com wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> At the risk of sounding like a complete noob, I need to ask a couple 
> simple questions about security...
> 
> Other than just going to the /home directory and seeing all the user 
> directories in there, is there another way to determine what user 
> accounts exist on the machine?

The best way to check is to look for entries in /etc/passwd, or the 
other passwd lookups listed in /etc/nsswitch.conf such as LDAP or NIS.

> Also, I need to determine which security groups each user belongs to.  I 
> checked out the /etc/group file but that doesn't seem to jive with what 
> is produced when I type 'groups' at the command line.  ex. I can see 
> that My user id is part of the 'ldap' group in the group file but when I 
> run groups there is an additional group that I am a part of that is not 
> reflected in the group file.  Here is the output from my queries:

Your GID might be set the the numerical ID of the 'mantas' group.  Check 
in /etc/passwd.  Also, your system might be configured to get group 
information from other sources as well, such as NIS or LDAP.  Check the 
groups entry in /etc/nsswitch.conf.

-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>