Linux-for-Sys-Ads/C2/Creating-user-account/English-timed
From Script | Spoken-Tutorial
| Time | Narration |
| 00:01 | Hello and welcome to the spoken tutorial on Creating User Account in Linux. |
| 00:08 | In this tutorial we will learn about |
| 00:10 | Creating user account with different options
slash etc slash passwd file, slash etc slash shadow file |
| 00:22 | To record this tutorial, I am using Ubuntu Linux 16.04 OS |
| 00:29 | To practice this tutorial, You should have gone through the Linux tutorial series on this website. |
| 00:36 | And you must have root access to the computer. |
| 00:41 | In an earlier tutorial on basics of system administration, we have learnt
To add a user using the following command: |
| 00:49 | Please note that the option field here, is not mandatory. |
| 00:54 | We will elaborate on the option field in this tutorial. |
| 00:59 | Open the Terminal by pressing Ctrl, Alt and T keys simultaneously on the keyboard. |
| 01:06 | First, you should login as superuser or root user. |
| 01:11 | To do so type: sudo space su and press Enter. |
| 01:18 | Type your password and then press Enter. |
| 01:22 | Notice, our login prompt has changed to a hash symbol. |
| 01:27 | This indicates that we are in the root user mode. |
| 01:31 | Now, let’s consider a scenario of a college. |
| 01:35 | We will have students, departments, etc. |
| 01:39 | As a system administrator, you should first create a user account for individual students. |
| 01:46 | Let’s add one user say amit using adduser command. |
| 01:51 | So, on the terminal type: adduser space amit and press Enter |
| 02:00 | It will prompt us to type the password for the user amit. |
| 02:04 | Let’s type pass underscore amit and press Enter. |
| 02:10 | Retype the same password and press Enter. |
| 02:14 | When it prompts for the Full Name field, type the name of the user as Amit with A in caps.
Press Enter. |
| 02:23 | Leave the other fields empty by pressing the Enter key. |
| 02:28 | Press Y to confirm that the information you provided is correct.
Press Enter |
| 02:36 | So, we got back our root command prompt.
The user amit is created now. |
| 02:42 | Linux automatically assigns a UID or User ID to the user. |
| 02:49 | It also creates a home directory for the user in the system’s home folder.
In this case, it is slash home slash amit |
| 03:00 | A group is also created with the same name as the username of the user. |
| 03:05 | Now, say we want a customized user ID or group |
| 03:11 | Or a home directory other than the default one |
| 03:15 | Or we want to change the default login shell |
| 03:20 | adduser supports options for each of these requirements. |
| 03:25 | Also you can combine multiple options to set multiple values in a single command. |
| 03:32 | Hyphen u option is used to set user ID |
| 03:37 | Hyphen home sets user home directory |
| 03:41 | Hyphen shell sets the login shell for the user |
| 03:46 | Hyphen c option is used to mention comments |
| 03:51 | Let us take an example. |
| 03:53 | Say we want to add a user Kaushik with
user ID as 1050 |
| 04:00 | home directory as testdir |
| 04:04 | login shell as slash bin slash sh |
| 04:08 | Also add “Kaushik is a re-registered student” in the comments. |
| 04:14 | Switch to the terminal.
Let me clear the terminal. |
| 04:18 | Type the command as shown here |
| 04:23 | Press Enter. |
| 04:26 | It will ask you to enter the password for Kaushik. |
| 04:30 | I will type the password as pass underscore kaushik
press Enter. |
| 04:37 | Retype the same password and press Enter. |
| 04:42 | Give the Full Name of the user as Kaushik with K in caps
press Enter. |
| 04:51 | And proceed as we have done before. |
| 04:57 | So, the user kaushik is created now. |
| 05:01 | Now type ls space /home and press Enter. |
| 05:07 | Notice, we have a new directory testdir. |
| 05:12 | How can we view other information such as user ID, login shell etc.? |
| 05:19 | In Linux, all configuration files are stored in simple text files. |
| 05:25 | /etc/passwd file contains the entire information about all the user accounts. |
| 05:33 | Let us have a look at the /etc/passwd file. |
| 05:37 | Switch to the terminal |
| 05:40 | Type cat space /etc/passwd and press Enter. |
| 05:48 | There will be an entry in this file for every user on the system. |
| 05:53 | Our passwd file shows this line for user Amit. |
| 05:58 | Each line has seven fields separated by colon. |
| 06:02 | Let us understand the fields one by one. |
| 06:06 | The first field is the username amit. |
| 06:10 | Remember, username should start with a lowercase letter, followed by any number of lowercase letters or digits |
| 06:19 | No special character other than underscore is allowed in the username |
| 06:25 | You should remember this while you are creating a user account |
| 06:29 | The second field is for password. |
| 06:32 | An x character indicates that the encrypted hash password is stored in the file /etc/shadow. |
| 06:41 | The third field is user ID for that particular user. |
| 06:46 | User id 0 is reserved for root user. |
| 06:50 | User ids upto 999 are reserved for other administrative or system users. |
| 06:58 | Real user account id starts from 1000. |
| 07:02 | So, you should specify a number more than 1000 in the adduser command. |
| 07:08 | The fourth field stores the primary group id for the user. |
| 07:13 | At the fifth place, we have the comments field. |
| 07:17 | It basically stores information about the user such as name of the user, room number, phone number, etc. |
| 07:26 | The sixth field indicates the home directory for the user. |
| 07:31 | At the end, we have the login shell of the user. |
| 07:36 | Notice that, we have default values set for user Amit. |
| 07:42 | However, user kaushik is created with our customized values. |
| 07:48 | Now, let’s have a look at the /etc/shadow file, where the encrypted passwords are stored. |
| 07:57 | Type cat space /etc/shadow and press Enter. |
| 08:05 | In this file, every line has information about a particular user. |
| 08:10 | And each line contains various fields separated by colon. |
| 08:16 | The first field is username, which must correspond to username field in /etc/passwd file. |
| 08:25 | Notice, the second field is the encrypted password for that user.
Let us skip the other fields for now. |
| 08:33 | To exit from the root user access, type exit and press Enter. |
| 08:39 | This brings us to the end of this tutorial.
Let us summarize. |
| 08:44 | In this tutorial we learnt about- Creating user account with different options like
Specific user id, Specific Home Directory, Specific shell |
| 08:56 | And adding comments |
| 08:59 | We also learnt about some of the fields in the */etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files. |
| 09:10 | As an assignment
Create user ankit with User ID as 1500 |
| 09:17 | Home directory named ankit underscore newdir |
| 09:22 | Login shell as /bin/csh |
| 09:27 | Include “Hostel 15” in the comment |
| 09:30 | Use a single command to perform all the tasks |
| 09:34 | Check the /etc/passwd file for the details of user account ankit |
| 09:41 | The video at the following link summarises the Spoken Tutorial project.
Please download and watch it. |
| 09:49 | The Spoken Tutorial Project team conducts workshops and gives certificates.
For more details, please write to us. |
| 09:58 | Do you have questions in this Spoken Tutorial?
Please visit this site. |
| 10:03 | Choose the minute and second where you have the question.
Explain your question briefly. |
| 10:10 | Someone from our team will answer them. |
| 10:14 | The Spoken Tutorial forum is for specific questions on this tutorial. |
| 10:19 | Please do not post unrelated and general questions on them.
This will help reduce the clutter. |
| 10:26 | With less clutter, we can use these discussion as instructional material. |
| 10:32 | Spoken Tutorial Project is funded by NMEICT, MHRD, Government of India. |
| 10:38 | The script has been contributed by Antara and this is Praveen from IIT Bombay signing off.
Thank you for joining. |
