newuser

[Bill Moran]

Matthew Seaman <m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk> wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 08:30:25AM -0400, Bill Moran wrote:
> > Matthew Seaman <m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk> wrote:
> > 
> > > On Thu, Jun 24, 2004 at 11:58:41PM -0400, James Bell wrote:
> > > >  
> > > > I have BSD UNIX.
> > > >  
> > > > What commands should I use from the root to create a new user.
> > > 
> > > Essentially:
> > > 
> > >     # pw useradd -n name -m
> > >     # passwd name
> > > 
> > > I suggest that you immediately read the pw(8) man page and the
> > > appropriate section of the Handbook:
> > > 
> > >     http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/users.html
> > 
> > Um ... no offense, Matt, but isn't that a bit overly difficult for a new
> > user?
> 
> I think that's an unreasonably pessimistic view of the capabilities of
> new users.

Not what I intended.

> pw(8) is not (IMHO) particularly difficult to use.

Agreed.

> Yes,
> there are a lot of different options for doing various things, but if
> you adopt the principle of not fiddling with the bits you don't (yet)
> understand, pw(8) basically does the right thing.  pw(8) also has a
> very nifty feature where you can just stick 'help' into the command
> line and it tells you what options are available.

My point was that adduser walks you through all the steps required to
create a user (such as entering the GECOS stuff, and picking a shell,
creating a home directory (although you handled that with -m))

Personally, I understand pw, and yet I find adduser to simply be more
convenient.  I guess that was my real point.  The difficulty in user
managemet on a Unix system (to a new user) is not the commands themselves,
but all the various steps required to actually create a useful user
account.  adduser puts those all together in a "wizard" fashon, while
pw gives you lots of opportunities to forget steps.

> > Try adduser ... the manpage is pretty informative.
> 
> TIMTOWTDI.

OK, you're going to have to enlighten me by letting me know what that
abbreviation stands for.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com