Adding Users in Linux

Question: How do I manually add a user on my Linux server?

Answer: There are many reasons why you might want to add a user manually. Some scripts require their own special users with generic permissions to run them. Creating a user is actually very easy. Just follow these steps:

1. Login to your server via SSH.
2. Become root:
$ su
3. If the user you want to make is called “mrtest” simply enter:

# adduser mrtest
4. It will ask for the user’s password. Enter it.
5. It will then ask for Full Name, room number, work phone, etc. All of this is optional.
6. Finally, it will ask if the information is correct. Just press Y for yes.

By default, the user’s group will be the same as the name. If it needs to be in another group, you will need to tell Linux to change it. We will cover that in another post.