> Managing Users

Adding a new user to the system is as simple as

The only required argument is the username of the new user. If you want to customize the properties of the account then you can use the following arguments, which are similar to the same arguments of the useradd command:

• -c "a comment" : a description of the account
• -d /directory/name : the home directory for the user, by default this will be a directory named after the username in /export/home
• -g group : you can specify the name (or numeric id) of an existing group that the new account should belong to
• -u uid : you can specify the numeric user-id of the new account
• -s shell : you can specify the login shell of the new user, /usr/bin/bash will be used if unspecified

A full example might be:

Once you've created a user account, you'll need to set a passwd, with the command

If the account is being accessed remotely over ssh, it's better to set up the .ssh/authorized_keys file to allow login using their ssh key, in which case you should remove the password from the account so that only the ssh key grants access, with

To delete a user account:

If you want the user's home directory to be deleted as well, then use the -r flag, like so:

/home vs /export/home

On Tribblix, user home directories are created under /export/home. This is a good place for them, and for normal users (as opposed to accounts for running services) there's no need to change it.

The /home directory might also be used. However, that location is often managed by the automounter, so you can't create a directory there. There are extra steps to configure the automounter, and it would normally only make sense for a network of systems where home directories are shared with NFS.

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