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Running the Show Part II
Creating User Accounts
Every person who uses your Linux system should have a separate user account. Having a user
account provides each person with an area in which to securely store files, as well as a means of
tailoring his or her user interface (GUI, path, environment variables, and so on) to suit the way that
he or she uses the computer.
You can add user accounts to most Linux systems in several ways??”Fedora and Red Hat
Enterprise Linux systems use the system-config-users utility, for example, and SUSE offers a user
setup module in YaST. This chapter describes how to add user accounts from the command line
with useradd because most Linux systems include that command.
Adding Users with useradd
The most straightforward method for creating a new user from the shell is with the useradd command.
After opening a Terminal window with root permission, you simply invoke useradd at the
command prompt, with details of the new account as parameters.
The only required parameter is the login name of the user, but you probably want to include some
additional information ahead of it. Each item of account information is preceded by a single letter
option code with a dash in front of it. Table 4-2 lists the options available with useradd.
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