Linux – Ubuntu server – adduser and create home directory structure without logging in

linuxUbuntu

I need to create a new user for an app (a standard user because it requires a user directory structure). However, I noticed adduser only creates the user home directory structure after the first login of that user.

I only plan to use the account with su to run the app. Is there any way I can create the user directories without logging in remotely first?

Best Answer

If you want to create the home directory when creating the user with no login needed:

useradd -m username

In the Debian/Ubuntu/Mint family, adduser and useradd are separate commands but in the Fedora/RHEL/CentOS family, /usr/sbin/adduser is a symlink to /usr/sbin/useradd and in OpenSuse, adduser doesn't exist by default.

Related Solutions

Linux – How to automatically create user accounts ( SSH + LDAP )

You don't need to actually make the user on the server2, only their home directory on first login. You're looking for pam_mkhomedir:

http://www.linux-pam.org/Linux-PAM-html/sag-pam_mkhomedir.html

Google will find you many howtos and examples on getting this set up.

Linux – Terminal only shows $

Your new user's login shell has been set to /bin/sh, which on Ubuntu is dash. This is a shell intended to be small and fast, to run scripts efficiently. It doesn't have any interactive features. Change your shell to zsh (better) or bash (more common):

chsh -s /bin/bash

If you want to change adduser's default shell, edit /etc/adduser.conf:

DSHELL=/bin/bash

Best Answer

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Linux – How to automatically create user accounts ( SSH + LDAP )

Linux – Terminal only shows $

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