User Management

Cookbook

• Check current users

  cat /etc/passwd

• Create user
  • with adduser, adduser is a perl script that uses useradd in the background, it will also create home directory etc. adduser is not available on every distro.

    sudo adduser {{username}}

  • useradd (will not prompt you for a password)

    useradd guest
    passwd guest

• Add existing user to the sudo group
  • with adduser

    sudo adduser {{username}} sudo

  • with usermod (generic option)

    sudo usermod -aG sudo {{username}}

    • -a: append
    • -G: group
  • in fedora, the sudo group is called wheel

    sudo usermod -aG wheel {{username}}

• Add a user, create a home dir, and add to the sudo group in one go (afterwards, you still need to set up the password using sudo passwd {{username}})

  sudo useradd -m -s /bin/bash -G sudo {{username}}

  • -m: will create a home directory
  • -s: will set the default shell for the user
  • -G {{groupname}}: will add the user to the group specified