This section describes the following information:
Guidelines for Assigning User Names, User IDs, and Group IDs
A typical user account includes the information a user needs to log in and use a system without having the system's root password. User account components are described in User Account Components.
When you set up a user account, you can add the user to a predefined group of users. A typical use of groups is to set up group permissions on a file and directory, which allows access only to those users who are part of that group.
For example, you might have a directory containing confidential files that only a few users should be able to access. You could set up a group called topsecret that includes the users that are working on the topsecret project. In addition, you could set up the topsecret files with read permission for the topsecret group so that only the users in the topsecret group would be able to read the files.
A special type of user account, called a role, gives selected users special privileges. For more information, see Chapter 1, About Using Rights to Control Users and Processes, in Securing Users and Processes in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .