ADDUSER(8) System Manager's Manual ADDUSER(8)
NAME
adduser - procedure for adding new users
DESCRIPTION
A new user must choose a login name, which must not already appear in /etc/passwdor /etc/aliases. It must also not begin with the hyphen
(``-'') character. It is strongly recommended that it be all lower-case, and not contain the dot (``.'') character, as that tends to con-
fuse mailers. An account can be added by editing a line into the passwd file; this must be done with the password file locked e.g. by
using chpass(1) or vipw(8).
A new user is given a group and user id. Login's and user id's should be unique across the system, and often across a group of systems,
since they are used to control file access. Typically, users working on similar projects will be put in the same groups. At the Univer-
sity of California, Berkeley, we have groups for system staff, faculty, graduate students, and special groups for large projects.
A skeletal account for a new user "ernie" might look like:
ernie::25:30::0:0:Ernie Kovacs,508 Evans Hall,x7925,642-8202:/a/users/ernie:/bin/csh
For a description of each of these fields, see passwd(5).
It is useful to give new users some help in getting started, supplying them with a few skeletal files such as .profile if they use
"/bin/sh", or .cshrc and .login if they use "/bin/csh". The directory "/usr/skel" contains skeletal definitions of such files. New users
should be given copies of these files which, for instance, use tset(1) automatically at each login.
FILES
/etc/master.passwd user database
/usr/skel skeletal login directory
SEE ALSO
chpass(1), finger(1), passwd(1), aliases(5), passwd(5), mkpasswd(8), vipw(8)
BUGS
User information should (and eventually will) be stored elsewhere.
4th Berkeley Distribution October 23, 1996 ADDUSER(8)
