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Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
, or 
LDAP
) exist around it. In this chapter, 
we'll look at managing users that exist locally to our server, and the groups that help 
define what they are able to do. 
Since Ubuntu Server is a distribution of Linux, it adopts the Unix-style of managing 
user accounts, groups, and permissions. Although our focus is on Ubuntu, many 
of the same commands around user management that you'll learn in this chapter 
will apply to other platforms as well. There are commands that allow you to add, 
remove, and change users, as well as commands that allow you to alter permissions.
Users in the context of a server refer to who (or what) is able to use the server. For 
example, you may have an accountant named Susan, or an IT administrator named 
Haneef, who both need to access the server. Perhaps Susan only needs access to a file 
share directory for accounting-related files, and Haneef might have more access to 
the server as a system administrator. The user accounts we create on our server will 
represent the actual people that will use it. 
Groups allow 
us to segregate access to be specific to a role. As we'll learn later, files 
and directories have user and group assignments. When combined with permissions, 
we'll be able to manage what our users are able to do with our server.
Users aren't always people, though. We also have system users on our server that 
applications and running processes might use for background or automated tasks. 
An example of this might be a backup job, and you may have a backup user that runs 
a task in the background to facilitate some sort of file copy task that copies important 
files to another place. You don't have to worry about system-related users for now, 
just know that they exist. You'll see more examples of this as we go through the 
book.

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Chapter 2