4.3BSD-UWisc/man/cat8/adduser.8

ADDUSER(8)          UNIX Programmer's Manual           ADDUSER(8)



NAME
     adduser - procedure for adding new users

DESCRIPTION
     A new user must choose a login name, which must not already
     appear in /_e_t_c/_p_a_s_s_w_d. An account can be added by editing a
     line into the passwd file; this must be done with the pass-
     word file locked e.g. by using _v_i_p_w(8).

     A new user is given a group and user id.  User id's should
     be distinct across a system, since they are used to control
     access to files.  Typically, users working on similar pro-
     jects will be put in the same group.  Thus at UCB we have
     groups for system staff, faculty, graduate students, and a
     few special groups for large projects.  System staff is
     group "10" for historical reasons, and the super-user is in
     this group.

     A skeletal account for a new user "ernie" would look like:

          ernie::235:20:&
          Kovacs,508E,7925,6428202:/mnt/grad/ernie:/bin/csh

     The first field is the login name "ernie".  The next field
     is the encrypted password which is not given and must be
     initialized using _p_a_s_s_w_d(1).  The next two fields are the
     user and group id's.  Traditionally, users in group 20 are
     graduate students and have account names with numbers in the
     200's.  The next field gives information about ernie's real
     name, office and office phone and home phone.  This informa-
     tion is used by the _f_i_n_g_e_r(1) program.  From this informa-
     tion we can tell that ernie's real name is "Ernie Kovacs"
     (the & here serves to repeat "ernie" with appropriate capi-
     talization), that his office is 508 Evans Hall, his exten-
     sion is x2-7925, and this his home phone number is 642-8202.
     You can modify the _f_i_n_g_e_r(1) program if necessary to allow
     different information to be encoded in this field.  The UCB
     version of finger knows several things particular to Berke-
     ley - that phone extensions start "2-", that offices ending
     in "E" are in Evans Hall and that offices ending in "C" are
     in Cory Hall. The _c_h_f_n(1) program allows users to change
     this information.

     The final two fields give a login directory and a login
     shell name.  Traditionally, user files live on a file system
     different from /usr.  Typically the user file systems are
     mounted on a directories in the root named sequentially
     starting from from the beginning of the alphabet, eg /a, /b,
     /c, etc.  On each such file system there are subdirectories
     there for each group of users, i.e.: "/a/staff" and
     "/b/prof".  This is not strictly necessary but keeps the
     number of files in the top level directories reasonably



Printed 12/27/86          May 23, 1986                          1






ADDUSER(8)          UNIX Programmer's Manual           ADDUSER(8)



     small.

     The login shell will default to "/bin/sh" if none is given.
     Most users at Berkeley choose "/bin/csh" so this is usually
     specified here. The _c_h_s_h(1) program allows users to change
     their login shell to one of the shells in the approved list
     given in /etc/shells.

     It is useful to give new users some help in getting started,
     supplying them with a few skeletal files such as ._p_r_o_f_i_l_e if
     they use "/bin/sh", or ._c_s_h_r_c and ._l_o_g_i_n if they use
     "/bin/csh".  The directory "/usr/skel" contains skeletal
     definitions of such files.  New users should be given copies
     of these files which, for instance, arrange to use _t_s_e_t(1)
     automatically at each login.

FILES
     /etc/passwd         password file
     /usr/skel           skeletal login directory

SEE ALSO
     passwd(1), finger(1), chsh(1), chfn(1), passwd(5), vipw(8)

BUGS
     User information should be stored in its own data base
     separate from the password file.





























Printed 12/27/86          May 23, 1986                          2