is there such a thing as a linux "user profile"?

[Robert P. J. Day]

  admittedly a weird question ... i have, on very short notice, been
handed a linux course to teach for a new client, and it's typically
taught in a centos 7 environment. perusing the manual, it all looks
reasonable, until i get to a section in the user/group administration
chapter called "configure user profiles."

  the section is weirdly written, and it may be nothing, but is there
such a thing as a "user profile" in linux, as opposed to just the
standard user/group/.profile configuration? that is, can a single
account have multiple "user profiles" configured for it in some way
that i've never been aware of?

  i suspect the term "user profile" here was simply badly chosen, but
i want to make sure i'm not misunderstanding something. thanks.

rday

-- 

========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                        http://crashcourse.ca

Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
LinkedIn:                               http://ca.linkedin.com/in/rpjday
========================================================================

[chicago]

You can configure multiple ssh keys but that's an ssh profile. Also you can have
separate Firefox prprofiles but I doubt they mean that. 

I think a standard "profile" would be a great idea but it would need buy in from
everyone. 

Cheers!

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2018, chicago wrote:

>  You can configure multiple ssh keys but that's an ssh profile.
> Also
>  you can have separate Firefox prprofiles but I doubt they mean that.
>
>  I think a standard "profile" would be a great idea but it would need
>  buy in from everyone. 
  i would love to cut and paste from this PDF doc, but it's
security-protected to disallow that. however, here's the money quote:

"Each user can create several user profiles for business or personal
use."

  i'm still reading but i've seen nothing yet that supports that
interpretation.

rday

[David King]

On 02/20/2018 09:44 AM, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>  On Tue, 20 Feb 2018, chicago wrote:
>
> > You can configure multiple ssh keys but that's an ssh profile. Also
> > you can have separate Firefox prprofiles but I doubt they mean that.
> >
> > I think a standard "profile" would be a great idea but it would need
> > buy in from everyone.
>    i would love to cut and paste from this PDF doc, but it's
>  security-protected to disallow that. however, here's the money quote:
>
>  "Each user can create several user profiles for business or personal
>  use."
>
>    i'm still reading but i've seen nothing yet that supports that
>  interpretation.
>
>  rday
>  
That language isn't clear to me either.  The following things cross my
mind as possibilities:

  * Bash login profiles.  This doc is an example of describing these as
    user profiles: http://linux-training.be/security/ch04.html
  * LDAP directory user entities, groups (roles) and profile/directory
    metadata, assuming the *nix system tied to an LDAP for authentication
  * Mail client profiles (ex. I have separate business and personal
    identities defined in Thunderbird)

-- 
David King
dave(a)daveking.com

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2018, David King wrote:

>  On 02/20/2018 09:44 AM, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>  > On Tue, 20 Feb 2018, chicago wrote:
>  >
>  >> You can configure multiple ssh keys but that's an ssh profile. Also
>  >> you can have separate Firefox prprofiles but I doubt they mean that.
>  >>
>  >> I think a standard "profile" would be a great idea but it would need
>  >> buy in from everyone.
>  >   i would love to cut and paste from this PDF doc, but it's
>  > security-protected to disallow that. however, here's the money quote:
>  >
>  > "Each user can create several user profiles for business or personal
>  > use."
>  >
>  >   i'm still reading but i've seen nothing yet that supports that
>  > interpretation.
>  >
>  > rday
>  >
>  That language isn't clear to me either.  The following things cross my
>  mind as possibilities:
>
>    * Bash login profiles.  This doc is an example of describing these as
>      user profiles: http://linux-training.be/security/ch04.html
>    * LDAP directory user entities, groups (roles) and profile/directory
>      metadata, assuming the *nix system tied to an LDAP for authentication
>    * Mail client profiles (ex. I have separate business and personal
>      identities defined in Thunderbird) 
  i finished the section ... it dealt only with customizing /etc/skel,
/etc profile, and so on and so on, all standard stuff ... completely
misleading reference to "user profiles." grrrrrrrr ...

rday

[fred roller]

[snip]
>  "Each user can create several user profiles for business or
> personal
>  use." 
[snip]

Seems to me that it simply means you can have more than one account on the
system like multiple users.  I, myself, have usually created an admin user
and a day to day user for security reasons (two accounts owned by one
person).  The ambiguous part seams to lead one to thinking you can fork
post log in depending on purpose of session, which, excepting in a ldap or
some-such set up, doesn't quite fly.  Linux is built on simplicity and the
path of least resistance here would be that a user can create multiple
accounts each serving a specific perpose.  Sure, with a few tweaks the two
or more can be seamless short of purpose; but, at the core they are
separate accounts on the system.

my two bits, hih
Fred

[Cameron Simpson]

On 20Feb2018 11:46, robert p. j. day <rpjday(a)crashcourse.ca&gt; wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Feb 2018, David King wrote:
> > On 02/20/2018 09:44 AM, Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > > "Each user can create several user profiles for business or personal
> > > use."
> > >
> > >   i'm still reading but i've seen nothing yet that supports that
> > > interpretation.
> > >
> > That language isn't clear to me either.  The following things cross my
> > mind as possibilities:
> >
> >   * Bash login profiles.  This doc is an example of describing these as
> >     user profiles: http://linux-training.be/security/ch04.html
> >   * LDAP directory user entities, groups (roles) and profile/directory
> >     metadata, assuming the *nix system tied to an LDAP for authentication
> >   * Mail client profiles (ex. I have separate business and personal
> >     identities defined in Thunderbird)
>
>   i finished the section ... it dealt only with customizing /etc/skel,
> /etc profile, and so on and so on, all standard stuff ... completely
> misleading reference to "user profiles." grrrrrrrr ... 
I think you're right - the courseware is only talking about the typical shell 
setup files.

Of course one _can_ make some additional scripts to source for special 
purposes. I've got a little command named "dev" which hacks my $PATH, 
$PYTHONPATH etc to have my current code directory parts mentioned at the front 
in order to run the code I'm hacking, versus the stable code installed in the 
usual places like ~/bin. One might consider such a thing an additional profile 
in the context you seem to describe.

Or, of course, the courseware might have been written by someone without proper 
understanding. That happens. Consider the basics written by an engineer or 
other specialist, later cleaned up/tweaked by a tech writer.

Personally I'd describe the shell login process to the students (/etc/profile, 
~/.profile etc), explain that this varies a little depending on the shell (eg 
~/.bash_profile), and explain that these are nothing more than scripts that are 
sourced to set up $PATH etc.

So while _these_ scripts constitute a profile in that they're run automatically 
for a login shell, in principle the "profile" (the current settings of $PATH 
and friends) can be further changed at any point as they see fit, and for 
common purposes one might keep a special purpose script around to do just that.

For myself, I sometimes keep a client/employer related script that hooks my 
shell into the environment I'm using to work on their stuff. Very handy to get 
predictable behaviour.

Cheers,
Cameron Simpson <cs(a)cskk.id.au&gt; (formerly cs(a)zip.com.au)

[Tim]

Allegedly, on or about 20 February 2018, Robert P. J. Day sent:
>  it all looks reasonable, until i get to a section in the user/group
>  administration chapter called "configure user profiles." 
Is it referring more to administrative controls placed on user accounts
(quotas, permissions, etc)?

It it simply referring to data about users (account names, real names,
that kind of thing)?

You'd need to provide some more insight into what that manual talks
about to get a good answer to your question.

-- 
[tim@localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 4.14.16-200.fc26.x86_64 #1 SMP Wed Jan 31 19:34:52 UTC 2018 x86_64

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the messages posted to the mailing list.

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[Robert P. J. Day]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2018, Tim wrote:

>  Allegedly, on or about 20 February 2018, Robert P. J. Day sent:
>  > it all looks reasonable, until i get to a section in the user/group
>  > administration chapter called "configure user profiles."
>
>  Is it referring more to administrative controls placed on user
>  accounts (quotas, permissions, etc)?
>
>  It it simply referring to data about users (account names, real
>  names, that kind of thing)?
>
>  You'd need to provide some more insight into what that manual talks
>  about to get a good answer to your question. 
  still working my way through it, but i see nothing beyond exactly
what i expect -- references to /etc/profile, .profile, /etc/skel and
so on. i'm just wondering if there is actually a thing called a "user
profile" in linux, beyond just what i would call account configuration
or account customization or what have you.

rday