User accounts on Ubuntu Server 14.04

Question

I'm new to Ubuntu server and I'm having a little trouble with a project.

I need to add a user account, add a comment, create and set the home directory, add primary group to user, and set the password for the user.

I have no problem doing these individually, but for my project I need to use a single command to create the user with the properties listed.

Can anybody help me with this?

Are the home dir, grp name to the same as the username or are they to be different? — George Udosen, Nov 30 '17 at 01:14
Same as username (isatssh) home directory should be /home/isatssh, group name should be isatssh — Daniel E, Nov 30 '17 at 01:20

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 30 '17 at 01:30

Assuming that by "a comment" you are referring to an entry in the GECOS field, you can do this using the newusers command. From man newusers:

NAME
       newusers - update and create new users in batch

SYNOPSIS
       newusers [options] [file]

DESCRIPTION
       The newusers command reads a file (or the standard input by default)
       and uses this information to update a set of existing users or to
       create new users. Each line is in the same format as the standard
       password file (see passwd(5)) with the exceptions explained below:

       pw_name:pw_passwd:pw_uid:pw_gid:pw_gecos:pw_dir:pw_shell

Ex.

$ sudo newusers << EOF
bob:12$dta%:::comment:/home/bob:/bin/bash
EOF
[sudo] password for steeldriver:

Checking

$ getent passwd bob
bob:x:1002:1002:comment:/home/bob:/bin/bash
$ ls -ld /home/bob
drwxr-xr-x 2 bob bob 4096 Nov 29 20:25 /home/bob

muclux · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-30T21:13:53.270

0

You may also have a look at man useradd.

sudo useradd -c 'this is Bob' -d /home/bob -g users -m -p 'aXjeklexjklrewj' bob

(NB: you have to give here the encrypted password)

edited Nov 30 '17 at 21:13

answered Nov 30 '17 at 20:25

muclux

5,154

User accounts on Ubuntu Server 14.04

2 Answers2