Create and Manage Users and Groups in Linux

In this article, we want to teach you How to create and manage users and groups in Linux.

In the previous articles, we mentioned how to create users on CentOS 7, Now You can use this Linux command for all of the Linux distributions like Centos, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora etc., and all of the versions.

Create and Manage Users and Groups in Linux

To create and manage users in Linux you can follow the below instructions.

Creating users in Linux

you can create users in Linux with the  command.

user add is a low-level utility to create users in Linux. On Debian, administrators should usually use add user instead.

To create a user you can use the following command:

sudo useradd [optins] username

Here are some common options for user add command to create users in Linux:

Define the home directory

parameter -b: The default base directory for the system if -d HOME_DIR is not specified. BASE_DIR is concatenated with the account name to define the home directory. If the -m option is not used, BASE_DIR must exist. If this option is not specified, the user add command to create users in Linux will use the base directory specified by the HOME variable in /etc/default/useradd, or /home by default.

parameter -d: Home directory (The new user will be created using HOME_DIR as the value for the user’s login directory. The default is to append the log-in name to BASE_DIR and use that as the login directory name. The directory HOME_DIR does not have to exist but will not be created if it is missing.

parameter-m: Create the user’s home directory if it does not exist.

With the parameter -c you can add a comment for users.

View the User’s login Shell

parameter -s view the name of the user’s login shell.

List group’s member

parameter -G lists the supplementary groups of which the user is also a member.

How to change passwords for users

By passwd command, you can change the password:

sudo passwd username

Here you learn how to create users in Linux and get familiar with its options.

Managing users in Linux

To manage the users in Linux you can use the usermod command.
For example:

 sudo usermod -s /bin/zsh username
How to delete users

You can delete a user by userdel command:

sudo userdel username

Note: if you want to delete the home directory of that user you shod use the -r option.

Create and manage groups

We have all the above commands that we have to create users and manage them for the groups too.

Create groups

groupadd command used for creating the groups:

sudo groupadd groupname
Modify groups

For example:

sudo groupmod -n group_new group_old

-n parameter changes the name of the group to a new name.

Delete groups

With groupdel, you can delete the groups.

sudo groupdel group-name
Change groups passwords

Also, we use passwd for changing the passwords.

sudo passwd group-name

Note: you can add a user to a group with the following command:

sudo -aG group-name username
Conclusion

In this article, you learn how to create and manage the users, as well as groups too.

Hope you enjoy this article about How to create and manage users and groups in Linux.

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