Managing many accounts

Your new Debian system was installed with a root account and possibly one

user account of your choice. Even if you are the only one who will ever use

the system, you will find that having multiple accounts can be useful at times,

if only to help keep different projects separate. If the system is to be used by

more than one person, then the following information is of more than passing

interest.

Adding a user

The Debian system provides the adduser program as the primary tool for

managing both user and system accounts. The simplest way to add the new

user fred, is the command:

adduser fred

adduser will choose the next available uid (user ID) for fred, create a user

and group with that id, create a home directory named fred, copy /etc/skel

into /home/fred, and then ask for a new password for fred. While there are

options that allow these items to be specified on the command line, this simple

command is the best way to integrate a new user into the system.

If you use the   disabled password option, the account will be created, but

it will be disabled until a password is assigned to fred. In this case, adduser

will not request a password at this time, and the passwd program must be used

later to activate the account. This allows you to set up all the users in a class,

and then assign them passwords as they come to you for them. This keeps

the account from being an entry point into the system for someone who finds

the  master  list. Once a password has been assigned to the user, they should

be encouraged to change their password immediately making the  assigned 

password useless to an intruder.

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