How-To Geek
Create a New User on Ubuntu Server 9.10
Creating a new user on Ubuntu server is easy—just sudo your shell to root, or run the following command:
adduser username
This will create the user, with output something like this:
root@ubuntugeek910:~# adduser testuser
Adding user `testuser' ...
Adding new group `testuser' (1001) ...
Adding new user `testuser' (1001) with group `testuser' ...
Creating home directory `/home/testuser' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
You can see all the options by typing adduser --help at the prompt.
adduser [--home DIR] [--shell SHELL] [--no-create-home] [--uid ID] [--firstuid ID] [--lastuid ID] [--gecos GECOS] [--ingroup GROUP | --gid ID] [--disabled-password] [--disabled-login] [--encrypt-home] USER Add a normal user adduser --system [--home DIR] [--shell SHELL] [--no-create-home] [--uid ID] [--gecos GECOS] [--group | --ingroup GROUP | --gid ID] [--disabled-password] [--disabled-login] USER Add a system user adduser --group [--gid ID] GROUP addgroup [--gid ID] GROUP Add a user group addgroup --system [--gid ID] GROUP Add a system group adduser USER GROUP Add an existing user to an existing group general options: --quiet | -q don't give process information to stdout --force-badname allow usernames which do not match the NAME_REGEX[_SYSTEM] configuration variable --help | -h usage message --version | -v version number and copyright --conf | -c FILE use FILE as configuration file
So there you have it. Creating a new user is easy.
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Comments (2)
Programmer by day, geek by night, The Geek, also known as Lowell Heddings, spends all his free time bringing you fresh geekery on a daily basis. You can follow him on Google+ if you'd like.
- Published 11/30/09
If I would specify a home directory for a new user same as directory of existing user, will it clean it contents or just make a link to the existing one?
@Eugene:
One option might be to test this on a COPY of the home directory and see what happens?
Copies can be made easily with variations of the ‘cp -a ‘ type command or ‘rsync -avP ‘ or simply using the graphical file manager of your choice if you have proper access privileges to all the files in question for a drag-n-drop operation.
If you target the copy first then you still have the unaltered original to fall back on if you make a mess. ;)