Install CentOS Part 4 : Adding A New User With useradd and usermod Command

One of the most common task you have to do as a Linux administrator is to add a new user.  Especially developers who always wants root access.  To accomplish this task you can use the useradd command in the Terminal session.  Follow the steps below to add a new user to CentOS.

1.  Switch into the root user using su - command

2. Type the following command useradd -s  /bin/bash -d /home/john -m john then press "Enter"

useradd is the command to add a new user to CentOS, below is an explaination of what each switch means in the command above

-s --shell SHELL - the login shell of the new account, which is the/bin/bash shell
-d --home-dir HOME_DIR - home directory of the new account, which is /home/john

3.  Type ls /home to list the content of the /home directory and you will see the john directory has been created for the user john

4.  We've created a new user name john, but he has no password, to set a password for john we can use the passwd command.  Type the following command to assign john a password passwd john  type in john's password when prompted with New Password:   and confirm the password when prompted with Retype new password:

5.  Even though john has a login, we still don't know what John's full name is to assign a real name to the login john we can use the usermod -c command to assign the login name john a real name

the command above usermod -c "John Wallace" john assigns the name John Wallace to the user name john