Linux User Management

Introduction

This guide explains how to manage users and groups in Linux, including creating users, assigning passwords, and organizing group memberships.

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Creating Users

To create a simple user in Linux, you simlpy run the command:

useradd username

Here username is the name of the user. This creates a new user with default settings. You can use -m to create a home directory like shown below.

useradd -m username

This will create a home folder inside the /home directory like /home/username.

Setting Passwords

To change the password for a user, you can use:

passwd username

This will prompt you to set or change the password for the user.

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Creating Groups

To create a group, you simply use:

groupadd groupname

Here groupname will be the name of the group.

Adding Users to Groups

To add a user to a group, you can use:

usermod -aG groupname username

This will add the user username to the group groupname. To remember easily, usermod modiefies the user parameter and appends it to a Group. Without append, it might overwrite something you don’t want it to.

Viewing Group Membership

By running groups username, you will list all the groups that the user username is a member of. This way, you can check your configuration.

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Deleting Users and Groups

To delete users and groups, you can use userdel username to delete the user username and groupdel groupname to delete the group groupname.

If you also want te remove the users home directory, you can add -r to userdel like below.

userdel -r username

Listing Users and Groups

To list all users, you can use view /etc/passwd and to list all groups, you can use view /etc/group.