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Create a Low Privileged User for a Planned Agent

While you can run the agent as a root user, it is a better security practice to create a low privileged account for the agent to use. We recommend that you create a low privileged user and group before installing the agent. Assign required permissions to the group and user.

Determine whether your site policies permit identical account on all agent hosts with passwords that never expire. If so, you can create a response file where the same agent user name can be used for all silent installations.

Note: The following procedures assume that the directory, /usr/sbin is in the system path.

To add a group and a user account for use by an agent that is not yet installed

  1. Log into the target agent host as root and access a command prompt.
  2. Create a group in /etc/group.
  3. Give the primary group full permissions to support subsequent changes to this low privileged user.
  4. Add the name of the planned low privileged user to the group you created.

    Consider an easily recognized username, such as elmagentusr.

  5. Set a password for the new user and re-enter to confirm it.