This infographic cheat sheet gives you a quick guide to the differences between user administration commands on AIX and other UNIX-derived operating systems, so that you can exploit user administration tools and techniques you find in user forums and elsewhere on the web.
Many administration activities that work on other UNIX-derived operating systems, such as Linux and Solaris, work without change on AIX. But user administration commands are an exception. IBM has its own unique commands that operate similarly to legacy UNIX, but you have to know the equivalents. For example, rather than the UNIX standard "adduser" command, AIX has "mkuser." This cheat sheet gives you a quick guide to the differences so that you can exploit user administration tools and techniques you find in user forums and elsewhere on the web.
| Download AIX User-Related Commands (Infographic) today! This quick guide highlights differences between user administration commands on AIX and other UNIX-derived operating systems. |
Here's a list of the most common UNIX user commands and their AIX equivalents:
| Function | UNIX Command | AIX Command |
|---|---|---|
| Create a user | useradd | mkuser |
| Change a user | usermod | chuser |
| Delete a user | userdel | rmuser |
| Change user's shell | usermod -s | chsh or passwd -s |
| Lock a user's account | passwd -l | chuser login=false |
Other user-oriented commands are nearly the same on AIX as its UNIX brethren:
| Function | AIX Command |
|---|---|
| Change password | passwd |
| Display current user details | whoami |
| List users currently logged in | who or w |
One thing AIX is famous for is giving administrators powerful commands that other UNIX variants lack. For user admin, AIX has the following unique yet useful commands. For example, to list all the users on the system, UNIX admins can only dump the /etc/passwd file. And to add or remove a users from a privilege control file, such as /etc/ftpusers, standard UNIX calls for directly editing the file—introducing the possiblity of devastating syntax errors. AIX has dedicated commands for these actions. Here's a summary of AIX "power" user commands:
| Function | AIX Command |
|---|---|
| List user account details | lsuser <username> |
| List all users | lsuser ALL |
| Print a table of specific user attrbutes | lsuser -a ALL |
| Check integrity of user accounts | usrck -t ALL |
| Add or delete user in /etc/ftpusers file | ruser -a -f or ruser -d -f |
| Add or delete user in /etc/host.lpd file | ruser -a -p or ruser -d -p |
| Add or delete user in /etc/hosts.equiv file | ruser -a -c or ruser -d -c |
| Show all users in /etc/ftpusers file | ruser -s -F (note upper-case) |
| Show all users in /etc/host.lpd file | ruser -s -P (note upper-case) |
| Show all users in /etc/hosts.equiv file | ruser -s -R (note upper-case) |
Armed with this cheat sheet, you're ready to begin adapting scripts and tricks from other UNIXes for your own AIX edification!
