Create a new account with the root user privilege

Scenarios

Use user-defined scripts of instances if you want to achieve the following results when creating a Linux ECS instance:

• Disable the default root account that comes with a Linux ECS instance. You can use the script to customize how to disable the root user and how many root user privileges are disabled.
• Create a new account with the root user privilege and customize the account name.
• Use only SSH key pairs, but not user passwords, for remote logon to manage the instance by using the new account with the root user privilege.
• If this new account is required to perform operations that can only be done by a user with root user privilege, the sudo command can be used without a password for privilege escalation.

Procedure

To create a new account with the root user privilege, follow these steps:

1. Create an instance by referring to Create an instance by using the wizard. Be aware of the following configuration items:
   • On the Basic Configurations page, note the following customized configurations:
     • Instance Type: Select an I/O-optimized instance.
     • Image: Select a supported image type, for example, CentOS 7.2 on the Public Image tab.
2. On the Networking page, set Network Type to VPC
3. On the System Configurations page, enter the following script in the User Data text box in the Advanced area:

   #! /bin/sh
   useradd test
   echo "test   ALL=(ALL)        NOPASSWD:ALL" | tee -a /etc/sudoers
   mkdir /home/test/.ssh
   touch /home/test/.ssh/authorized_keys
   echo "ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABJQAAAQEAhGqhEh/rGbIMCGItFVtYpsXPQrCaunGJKZVIWtINrGZwusLc290qDZ93KCeb8o6X1Iby1Wm+psZY8THE+/BsXq0M0HzfkQZD2vXuhRb4xi1z98JHskX+0jnbjqYGY+Brgai9BvKDXTTSyJtCYUnEKxvcK+d1ZwxbNuk2QZ0ryHESDbSaczlNFgFQEDxhCrvko+zWLjTVnomVUDhdMP2g6fZ0tgFVwkJFV0bE7oob3NOVcrx2TyhfcAjA4M2/Ry7U2MFADDC+EVkpoVDm0SOT/hYJgaVM1xMDlSeE7kzX7yZbJLR1XAWV1xzZkNclY5w1kPnW8qMYuSwhpXzt4gsF0w== rsa-key-20170217" | tee -a /home/test/.ssh/authorized_keys
   					

   Note

   • The first line must be #!. /bin/sh, with no leading space.
   • Do not enter unnecessary spaces or carriage return characters in the text.
   • The last line is your public key. You can define it.
   • You can add other configuration in the script as you need.
   • The example script only applies to CentOS 7.2. If you are using other images, customize the script according to the operating system types.

After the instance is started, you can use the new test user to connect to the instance by using an SSH private key. You can also escalate the permission level by using the sudo command and run operations that require the root user privilege, as shown in the following figure.