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Users

The Users page lists the regular accounts (UID 1000 and up; never root or system accounts) and changes them:

  • Full name, login name (renaming moves /home/OLD to /home/NEW; not for the account you're logged in with, nor one with programs running), password (with a strength hint), administrator (the wheel group), login shell (from /etc/shells) and picture.
  • Groups: the optional ones only, explained in plain words (input for sc-controller and gamepad tools, uucp for serial ports, video, audio, storage, rfkill and so on). They apply from the next login.
  • Add user… (full name, login name suggested from it, password, administrator) and Remove… (keeping the home folder or deleting it).

Changes go through xcontrol-user-helper, the third small root helper, run with pkexec. It only touches regular accounts, accepts only valid names (the full name can't contain : , =), reads passwords from its standard input (never the command line), only manages the groups listed above, and refuses to delete, rename or demote the account that's using XControl, so you can't lock yourself out. Your own picture is also written to ~/.face; login screens that use AccountsService (LightDM, GDM, SDDM) get a copy in /var/lib/AccountsService.

XControl's root helpers come with a polkit policy (io.github.xcontrol.policy): after you type your password once, further changes don't ask again for a few minutes. On i3 a polkit agent has to be running for the password prompt, e.g. exec --no-startup-id /usr/lib/polkit-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1.