Creating the Service Account

Appendix E Troubleshooting

Preventive Maintenance

You can create a service account for TAC to use during troubleshooting. Although more than one user can have access to the sensor, only one user can have service privileges on a sensor. The service account is for support purposes only.

The root user password is synchronized to the service account password when the service account is created. To gain root access you must log in with the service account and switch to user root with the su - root command.

Caution Do not make modifications to the sensor through the service account except under the direction of TAC. If you use the service account to configure the sensor, your configuration is not supported by TAC. Adding services to the operating system through the service account affects proper performance and functioning of the other IPS services. TAC does not support a sensor on which additional services have been added.

Caution You should carefully consider whether you want to create a service account. The service account provides shell access to the system, which makes the system vulnerable. However, you can use the service account to create a password if the administrator password is lost. Analyze your situation to decide if you want a service account existing on the system.

Note For IPS 5.0 and later, you can no longer remove the cisco account. You can disable it using the no password cisco command, but you cannot remove it. To use the no password cisco command, there must be another administrator account on the sensor. Removing the cisco account through the service account is not supported. If you remove the cisco account through the service account, the sensor most likely will not boot up, so to recover the sensor you must reinstall the sensor system image.

To create the service account, follow these steps:

Step 1 Log in to the CLI using an account with administrator privileges.

Step 2 Enter configuration mode.

sensor# configure terminal

Step 3 Specify the parameters for the service account. The username follows the pattern ^[A-Za-z0-9()+:,_/-]+$, which means the username must start with a letter or number, and can include any letter A to Z (capital or small), any number 0 to 9, - and _, and can contain 1 to 64 characters.

sensor(config)# user username privilege service

Step 4 Specify a password when prompted. A valid password is 8 to 32 characters long. All characters except space are allowed. If a service account already exists for this sensor, the following error is displayed and no service account is created.

Error: Only one service account may exist

Step 5 Exit configuration mode.

sensor(config)# exit sensor#

When you use the service account to log in to the CLI, you receive this warning.

Cisco Intrusion Prevention System Appliance and Module Installation Guide for IPS 7.1

	OL-24002-01	E-5

IPS4520K9 specifications

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Cisco Systems IPS4520K9 manual Creating the Service Account, Exit configuration mode

Models: IPS4520K9