Skip to main content

Ubuntu Linux useradd vs adduser which is the easier command?

There are two main commands in Ubuntu for creating users. I've found them confusing and I always forget which to use when. So, thought to write them down clearly as a quick reference.

TLDR;

adduser - Interactive tool, creates home directory and prompts for password and more details.

useradd - A low level tool to creat a user. Doesn't create home dir if not specified. Use passwd command to add/change password for the user.


Easier Command

adduser

If you want to create a typical user for Ubuntu, just use "adduser" command. This is an interactive high level tool which will take in username, and more details including password. It will create the home directories as well.

adduser <username>


adduser command


You can simply use this to add a user to a specific group also.

adduser <username> <group name>


adduser to a group




Not so easier commands

useradd

This ia low level tool which would create the user. Home directory is not created unless specified.

useradd <username>


useradd

useradd with home directory

useradd -m <username>

useradd with home dir


Add user to a group 

In oder to add user to a group, you can also use usermod command.

sudo usermod -aG <group name> <username>

usermod

Also this can be use for various user modifications like changing the home directory etc. Refer the man pages for more details.


passwd

This can be used to set a password or change a password to a user.

passwd <username>

passwd

Delete a user

You can use deluser command to delete a user. 

deluser <username>

delete user

Notice that home directory still exists even after deleting the user.

If it requires to delete the home directory, you can use --remove-home flag.

deluser --remove-home <username>

deluser remove home




All in all, adduser command is a highlevel interactive tool which can do same thing as using combinations of multiple low level commands. Even though useradd command is a low level tool, this is much useful if you need to create system users with various requirements. You can even set an expiration for a user with this command. Check out the command man page for more details.



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Install Docker on Windows 11 with WSL Ubuntu 22.04

This is to install Docker within Ubuntu WSL without using the Windows Docker application. Follow the below steps. Install Ubuntu 22.04 WSL 1. Enable Windows Subsystem for Linux and Virtual Machine platform Go to Control Panel -> Programs -> Programs and Features -> Turn Windows features on or off 2. Switch to WSL 2 Open Powershell and type in the below command. wsl --set-default-version 2 If you don't have WSL 2, download the latest WSL 2 package and install it.  3. Install Ubuntu Open Microsoft Store and search for Ubuntu. Select the version you intend to install. I'd use the latest LTS version Ubuntu 22.04. Click on the Get button. It will take a couple of minutes to download and install. 4. Open up the installed Ubuntu version that was installed. If you get an error like the below image, make sure to install the WSL2 Kernel update .  If it's an older Ubuntu version the error message would be something like the image below. Error: WSL 2 requires an update to its

Wget download pause and continue

If you are downloading a file with the wget command, sometimes you may need to pause it and start it back from the place where you paused rather than starting from the beginning. So you don't have to re-download the entire package. Wget can do this just like downloading from a web browser. Let's say I need to download a file from the web. So I'm using the wget command as follows. Download wget <url for the file> Pause To pause the download just hit ctrl + c  the shortcut to terminate the current command. Continue This is going to be the same command but -c switch to continue from the previous download. wget -c <url for the file> Simple as that! Yeah, you can download from a web browser, but this is more fun and easier 😋 If you are lazy like me, wget saves a couple of clicks.

How to fix SSLHandshakeException PKIX path building failed in Java

TL ; DR 1. Extract the public certificate of the website/API that you are trying to connect from your Java application. Steps are mentioned in this post 2. Use the Java keytool to install the extracted certificate into the "cacerts" file (Trust store) keytool -import -trustcacerts -alias <domain name> -file <public certificate>.cert -keystore /path_to_java_home/jre/lib/security/cacerts -storepass changeit 3. Restart your Java application Exception A typical exception stack trace would look like below. javax.net.ssl. SSLHandshakeException : sun.security.validator.ValidatorException: PKIX path building failed : sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target at sun.security.ssl.Alerts.getSSLException(Alerts.java:192) at sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.fatal(SSLSocketImpl.java:1959) at sun.security.ssl.Handshaker.fatalSE(Handshaker.java:302) at sun.security.ssl.Handshake