Chapter 11. Managing user accounts

Table of Contents
11.1. What's an account?
11.2. Creating a user
11.2.1. /etc/passwd and other informative files
11.2.2. Picking numeric user and group ids
11.2.3. Initial environment: /etc/skel
11.2.4. Creating a user by hand
11.3. Changing user properties
11.4. Removing a user
11.5. Disabling a user temporarily

"The similarities of sysadmins and drug dealers: both measure stuff in Ks, and both have users." (Old, tired computer joke.)

This chapter explains how to create new user accounts, how to modify the properties of those accounts, and how to remove the accounts. Different Linux systems have different tools for doing this.