Adding users

[dave]

Hi all. Have gentoo installed no problem, and have been running around as root for a bit. Tried adduser myusername, but was given warnings about templates, etc. What do I need to do to add a user and give them everything they need, assign them to proper groups (ie, add them to the wheel group if they need to su, etc)?

Thanks a ton!

[gschneider]

man username

for starters:

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adduser -g users -G wheel -d /home/username -s /bin/bash -c "Full Name" -m username

param -m is important, it creates the home directory (given with -d) and copies all files from /et/skel.

then run

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passwd username

and enter a password for the user.

Regards,
Gerald

[Nitro]

I suggest that you look at

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man useradd

it will show you all kinds of information about how to use the command.

Is the error you are getting:

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useradd: warning: CREATE_HOME not supported, please use -m instead.

The CREATE_HOME is little feature of the useradd used on RedHat and Mandrake. It doesn't work in Gentoo. For somereason; however, it is include in the config file and generates an error. To get rid of the error edit /etc/login.defs and on (or near) line 10 you will find: 'CREATE_HOME no' simply put a comment at the beginning of the line.

Some other things you can do are:

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useradd username   # should run without error now
useradd -m username   # will create the users homedirectory in /home
useradd -g wheel username  # will add a user and set their primary group to wheel (defaults to users)
useradd -G group1,group2  # sets the seconday groups
passwd username   # will set a password for username, this is needed to actually login

And, if you wish to modify a user after adding them, use the usermod command, you can read more about that in

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man usermod

[dave]

I appreciate all of the help, and have to admit this is a great community (and so far a killer distro)!

[danielrm26]

One of the guys in #gentoo hooked me up so I am passing it along to you guys.

emerge superadduser

That is a user adding script that will prompt you for most of the important paramaters. Then just make an alias to adduser or whatevery you want to type to execute it.

[freefall]

emerge superadduser actually works now. It didn't last week and now I have begun to like useradd.

[static]

What is this wheel group? static will need to be part of group wheel to be able to su to root?

[klieber]

What is this wheel group? static will need to be part of group wheel to be able to su to root?

My understanding is that membership in the wheel group gives you the ability to su. I'm sure it has other uses, but I believe that's the primary one.

--kurt

[Lemma]

The different user-groups that there are in this dist, how do i track them down? (So I can use them, ex wheel, cdrw and audio, what do?)
/Lemma

[klieber]

The different user-groups that there are in this dist, how do i track them down?

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cat /etc/group

(or replace "cat" with your favorite pager)

--kurt

[LosD]

What is this wheel group? static will need to be part of group wheel to be able to su to root?

wheel is a group used for people with administrator (or "semi-administrator") privileges...

Common uses are su, sudo, samba write access to some shares, and whatever else you want to use it for... (or, AFAIK, in the case of su and maybe some other commands, is forced to use it for).

I think the name is from the *BSD's...
Dennis

[papaC]

And how to add a user that can only login if they are seated in front of the machine? I want to add some people to be able to login to my main box to use desktop apps, games, etc. But don't want them to be able to login over the network.

[sarnold]

And how to add a user that can only login if they are seated in front of the machine? I want to add some people to be able to login to my main box to use desktop apps, games, etc. But don't want them to be able to login over the network.

Try /etc/login.access for that...

[ollie]

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emerge superadduser

[pjp]

emerge superadduser had already been suggested.

[MacMasta]

Actually BSDs (and Solaris) use the operator group, not wheel...


I always used:

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#useradd -g wheel -G othergroup1, othergroup2 -d /home/user/ -s /bin/bash -c Name -m -k /etc/skel username

and then passwd username.

~Mac~

[modal]

I've always used superadduser with gentoo, it's been great. But, i've heard that it has quite a bit of functionality problems ie., pretending to accept certain information, when in fact it should spit out an error, and other things. (unfortunately i'm not sure about them, since i'm not the one who was talking about them on #gentoo)
Does anyone know of a port from BSD's user adding program that is much like superadduser?

[golemB]

I tried out the helpful hints in this thread, and it worked fine - with a hitch.

I got my system up and running with Gentoo by preserving my /home filesystem (with just myself as the primary user) and wiping out the / and other filesystems. I got KDE up as root (took a lonnnng time) and then I tried to "useradd" myself in, using:

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useradd -g wheel -G floppy,cdrw,audio -d /home/myusername -c "My Name" myusername

When I try to "su - myusername" it hangs indefinitely, and same problem with plain "su myusername". I tried the same thing (this time with the -m flag to actually create home dir) for "myusername2" and that worked fine, and I can become that user with no problem.

[golemB]

Never mind - I realized afterwards that I had to chown -R the /home/myusername directory. Odd that su dies without ownership of the home dir.