Baslinux mailing list

[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

We still could not figure out how to set up a new account with useradd, 
which gives very cryptic (to us) instructions:
useradd [P passwd] name

We left out the optional [ ] part and just typed 
useradd jim

Then discovered that we need a password for jim, not just the Enter key,
and used adduser to fix this up (type Enter key when it asks for a 
password, and again when it complains your password is too weak and too 
short].

There already seems to be a user account called 'user' - would this have 
password [enter key]?  I looked in /etc/passwd/

Can we forget shadow.tgz and simply hand-edit /etc/passwd to add users and 
change their passwords?

jim's new account does not specify (at the end if the line in /etc/passwd)
/bin/bash - is this the default shell?

We answered all questions about groups, etc., in add user with the enter 
key.  Now it seems we need to set some permissions in order to use the 
account.

Please explain, someone.  

A user account appears to be needed in order to print other than from the 
command line, and I think it was recommended to dial (ppp-on) with root 
and then switch to user to run a browser for security reasons.  And dosemu 
requires a user account.  



On Sat, 10 Jan 2004, Sindi Keesan wrote:

> > > I tried to set up a user account (installed shadow.tgz 
> > > and did useradd but I could not figure out the right way 
> > > to specify my password) 
> > 
> > passwd
> 
> So I would type just useradd login passwd, substituting for these two 
> words my chosen login and password, or do I need to type the word passwd?
> There was a -P before the passwd in the screen that i got when I typed 
> useradd.  Assuming my login is aaaaa and my password is bbbbb do i type:
> useradd aaaaa -P passwd bbbbb 
> or
> useradd aaaaa -P bbbbb
> or
> useradd aaaaa bbbbb
>