LINUX USERS: making and breaking them

By | July 5, 2016

When logged in as root (system admin) you can create users using the useradd command along with the desired username like this:

# useradd alex007

A prompt would ask for the password of the root or admin user to ensure that its a privileged person that is trying to create a new user. After creating the user, you must also create the users initial password:

#passwd alex007

Then a prompt follow where you enter the password you want twice. If the password is not created for a new user the user would be unable to log into the system.

 

When a new user is created, an entry in the /etc/passwd for the user is created by Linux automatically. Check this by using;

# cat /etc/passwd

The system also creates a directory, labelled with the users username in the /home directory. Like in the case above when alex077 is created, the users home directory is /home/alex007 or check with this command;

# ls /home

 

Deleting users:

The command to delete users from the system is the userdel command.

# userdel alex007

This removes the users entry in the systems /etc/passwd file.

You could also use;

# userdel –r alex007

Using the r option removes all the users files and directories automatically or you have to manually delete the files yourself.

 

Happy Linux’NG!


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