AddUser

adduser(8) creates a user.

Installation

Linux and BSD distributions will either have adduser(8) pre-installed, or direct users to instead use useradd(8).

Usage

To create a new user, consider using adduser(8) interactively, by calling just the binary name.

To add a user to a group, try:

adduser USERNAME GROUPNAME

When using adduser(8) in a script, it can be important to consider portability. The BusyBox implementation only supports the following short-form flags.

adduser [OPTIONS] USER [GROUP]
Create new user, or add USER to GROUP
    -h DIR      Home directory"
    -g GECOS    GECOS field"
    -s SHELL    Login shell"
    -G GRP      Add user to existing group"
    -S          Create a system user"
    -D          Don't assign a password"
    -H          Don't create home directory"
    -u UID      User id"
    -k SKEL     Skeleton directory (/etc/skel)"

It's typical to explicitly create the user group with addgroup(8) as well.

addgroup example
adduser -D -h /var/example -s /bin/nologin -G example example

See also

adduser(8)

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