1ADDUSER(8) System Manager's Manual ADDUSER(8)
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6 adduser - procedure for adding new users
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9 A new user must choose a login name, which must not already appear in
10 /etc/passwdor /etc/aliases. It must also not begin with the hyphen
11 (``-'') character. It is strongly recommended that it be all lower-
12 case, and not contain the dot (``.'') character, as that tends to con‐
13 fuse mailers. An account can be added by editing a line into the
14 passwd file; this must be done with the password file locked e.g. by
15 using chpass(1) or vipw(8).
16 A new user is given a group and user id. Login's and user id's should
18 be unique across the system, and often across a group of systems, since
19 they are used to control file access. Typically, users working on sim‐
20 ilar projects will be put in the same groups. At the University of
21 California, Berkeley, we have groups for system staff, faculty, gradu‐
22 ate students, and special groups for large projects.
23 A skeletal account for a new user “ernie” might look like:
25 ernie::25:30::0:0:Ernie Kovacs,508 Evans
27 Hall,x7925,642-8202:/a/users/ernie:/bin/csh
28 For a description of each of these fields, see passwd(5).
30 It is useful to give new users some help in getting started, supplying
32 them with a few skeletal files such as .profile if they use “/bin/sh”,
33 or .cshrc and .login if they use “/bin/csh”. The directory “/usr/skel”
34 contains skeletal definitions of such files. New users should be given
35 copies of these files which, for instance, use tset(1) automatically at
36 each login.
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39 /etc/master.passwd user database
40 /usr/skel skeletal login directory
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43 chpass(1), finger(1), passwd(1), aliases(5), passwd(5), mkpasswd(8),
44 vipw(8)
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47 User information should (and eventually will) be stored elsewhere.
484th Berkeley Distribution October 23, 1996 ADDUSER(8)