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.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

VLC skins

It's been a while from my first blog post, so today I thought to make a blog post about skins in VLC player. I think you all are familiar with VLC player if not, here's the link for the website www.videolan.org/vlc/index.htm l In brief, VLC player is a free and opensource player that can play almost all the types of media formats. Even though it is a such a nice player, it looks kind of old and rusty, like the windows classic look. But you can make it prettier by just adding some new skins to it.  You can download skins for the player from here http://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins.php Then place the downloaded skin file (.vlt file) in the " skin " folder in the installation directory.           eg:- in windows:    C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\skins           or in linux systems:  ~/.local/share/vlc/skins Then, open the VLC player and go to the preferences. ...
2 comments
Read more

How to set terminal title in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

In older Ubuntu versions, you could have just right-clicked on the Ubuntu Terminal window's title bar and set any title you would like. But unfortunately after Ubuntu 18.04 LTS this feature is gone. I used to love this feature because I'm multiple tabs in the single terminal window kind of a guy. I usually like to work in multiple named terminal tabs like below. By default, in newer Ubuntu version, it is showing just the current directory. Let's see how we can do this. Ubuntu prompt In ubuntu's Bash, there's an environment variable $PS1 which is responsible for the details that the command line prompts. You'll be able to echo this and see what's inside it. If I echo it it will print something like this. echo $PS1 \[\e]0;\u@\h: \w\a\]${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ If you really want to understand what this means, you can refer this page .  Updating the termina...
6 comments
Read more

Java, how to create a list with a single element

 I wanted to create a Java List with a single element. Yet, I wanted to add more elements later. So, I was looking for a couple of ways to do this. So far there are multiple elegant ways to create a list with a single element with a one-liner. Not so much for a modifiable list though. Here's what I gathered so far. Followings are a few ways of creating a list with strictly a single entry. Can't add more elements. 1. Collections.singletonList() This returns an immutable list that cannot be modified or add more elements. // An immutable list containing only the specified object. List<String> oneEntryList = Collections. singletonList ( "one" ) ; oneEntryList.add( "two" ) ; // throws UnsupportedOperationException 2.  Arrays.asList() This returns a fixed-size list consisting of the number of elements provided as arguments. The number of elements provided would be an array hence the size is fixed to the length of the array. // Returns a fixed-size list List...
Post a Comment
Read more