Understanding the hierarchy of users and their privileges on the VPS v2 Virtual Server can help you make decisions regarding privileges and permissions for users and groups.

By default, you have two login identities: a root login and password, and an Administrative User login and password. Using these, you can then create additional user accounts for customers (virtual users) who want to use your services.

System users are the programs that do all the work, such as www, sshd, and man.

Root User
As the root user you have “superuser” privileges in controlling all resources (files, users, processes, etc.) belonging to the VPS v2 Virtual Server. You can log in as root using SSH, SFTP, and iManager. By default—for security reasons—you cannot use Telnet, FTP, POP or IMAP. (The Administrative User has these privileges.)

You should do as little as possible, as the root user. As you can control all resources, so can you also do some dangerous things, such as unknowingly “touching” or changing many files. If that happens, unused disk space shrinks very rapidly.

Administrative User
As the Administrative User, you can conduct user and Web management for multiple virtual users. Your membership in the “wheel” group enables you to su to root (if you know root’s password) to install applications and perform additional administrative tasks.

You also have membership in the FTP group, shell access, and membership in the POP and IMAP groups. You will receive mail for root. You can also use the following sudo commands, see the /usr/local/etc/sudoers file for a complete list of commands.

See the sudo man page for more information.

Virtual User
A virtual user, more often simply called a user, is any user that is created by root user or the Administrative User and has shell, FTP, e-mail, and/or Web privileges. See “Creating New User Accounts” in Chapter 2System User

A system user is any operating system “user” running programs on your server. System users appear at the top of the list before virtual users, when you use the vlistuser -a command.