Did you ever have one of those (nerdy) days?
So, I’m trying to log on to our ESX server using VNC and hopelessly failing.
I know I can’t log in as root remotely, I have to have my personal account. Really, it only makes good sense. But I’m trying my username / password combination and it’s not letting me log on.
Now, I hate to admit this, but I’m really not used to not having permission to log on. I’m Lord of my LAN, Nabob of my Network, BOFH and root and administrator all. Whatever could be happening here?
Run over to the console, log on as root. Ahh, I don’t have a home directory. Sure, we redid this when VMWare was doing the ESX install. Okay, I got overwritten, I won’t take it personally.
adduser mark
user mark already exists! WHAAA?
passwd mark
Change password to my super-secret corporate standard password.
Get warning that my super-secret corporate standard password is based on a reversed dictionary word
Type password in a text editor to figure out what the reversed dictionary word is. Give up and get on with my day.
So I log on with my name and newly reset password aaaaaaaaaaaaand… I get a blip on my screen and a blank log on screen once more.
It’s about this point where I start to worry that something is wrong. That’s okay, all I have to do is delete myself.
deluser mark
bash: deluser: command not found
Now HERE is where we get to the meat of this entry.
Just who over at Red Hat dropped the ball here?
Let me give you mere mortals a few lessons on computers. Programmers NEVER, EVER, EVER pass up a chance for a good joke. Especially when it meets in the theme of the program itself.
Are you using Windows? Select the “File” menu at the top. Look at the bottom entry. See where it says Exit? Don’t click that. If you click on that you’ll miss the Ha-Ha, or have to reload all this again.
Now look at the top right corner of your screen. See it? It’s a big red box with a white X in it if you’re using XP. Want to close your program? Hit that button. X-it. Got it? Ha-ha-ha! That’s a really good joke, Dwayne. Ignore the fact that Microsoft seems to have missed the joke in the first place. They called it Close. Losers.
Now, to add a user from the command line in Linux you can use either adduser or useradd. To me, the world makes more sense to ADD a USER. I’m doing something to a person. The person is also getting added, but I prefer the more forceful adduser command. It doesn’t always work, seems useradd is the preferred method. Losers.
Now the problem with users is that, on whole, frankly - they’re pretty dumb. No, not YOU. I’m talking about the rest of the dumb users. Collectively the worst of the worst are complete losers. Ha-ha-ha. Users, Losers. Lusers. Ha-ha-ha. Get it?
So the gist of this whole thing is if you add users, you need a good way to delete users as well.
delete user. Naw, deluser. Yeah.
**deluser **Ha-ha-ha!
Get it?
de-luser a system. You got a box crawling with users? You need a de-lousing. Well, a de-lusering at the very least. Purge ‘em out, flush ‘em out. Get rid of ‘em.
*sigh* Apparently, deluser is Debian-specific. The other distros are stuck with the little bastards.
Well, at least I know Bug (and perhaps CAMZ) will get a smug little smile on over this. The rest of you can just go back to pretending I’m sane and won’t gnaw your ankle bone off should you look at me sideways.