Creating a user by hand

 

To create a new account manually, follow these steps:

1. Edit /etc/passwd  with vipw (8) and add a new line for the new account. Be careful with the syntax. Do not edit directly with an editor! vipw  locks the file, so that other commands won't try to update it at the same time. You should make the password field be `*', so that it is impossible to log in.
2. Similarly, edit /etc/group  with vigr , if you need to create a new group as well.
3. Create the home directory of the user with mkdir .
4. Copy the files from /etc/skel  to the new home directory.
5. Fix ownerships and permissions with chown  and chmod . The -R option is most useful. The correct permissions vary a little from one site to another, but usually the following commands do the right thing:

   cd /home/newusername
   chown -R username.group .
   chmod -R go=u,go-w .
   chmod go= .

6. Set the password with passwd (1).

After you set the password in the last step, the account will work. You shouldn't set it until everything else has been done, otherwise the user may inadvertently log in while you're still copying the files.

It is sometimes necessary to create dummy accounts that are not used by people. For example, to set up an anonymous FTP server (so that anyone can download files from it, without having to get an account first), you need to create an account called ftp. In such cases, it is usually not necessary to set the password (last step above). Indeed, it is better not to, so that no-one can use the account, unless they first become root, since root can become any user.