adduser command question

[RedHatNewbie]

Hi All,

This is my first post here and I have a really stupid newbie question. I set up a Red Hat desktop computer about 3 weeks ago. My first foray into Linux. I can easily add and configure new user accounts using linuxconfig, but want to be able to do it directly from the command line. I can "su - root" and "adduser username" with no problem. My question is how I add a password for the new account created this way. If I try to login to the new user account, it requests a password and since I've never created one, anything I try, including a "enter" with nothing on the line, I get an "invalid password" message. If I "cd" to the new account as root, and try the "passwd" command, I end up changing my root password. As I said in the beginning, I am a raw newbie with Linux and hope that I've not violated any list conventions by posting such a basic question here.

thanks in advance for any assistance,

Jim

[Schotty]

[quote author=RedHatNewbie link=board=1;threadid=5143;start=0#50869 date=1033225616]
My question is how I add a password for the new account created this way. [/quote]

Hi Jim, welcome to LJR!

Your question is actually an easy one. Root can change any password really easily. As root, type :

passwd nameofuser

and a prompt will ask for the new password and soforth..

[RedHatNewbie]

Thank you! I should have known that it would be simple! I just tried it and it worked perfectly.

Thanks again,

Jim

[Compunuts]

For the future, if you have questions about commands, just do "man <command>" and you will see what you can do in brief explaination. For example, "man adduser" will show you a good bit of options you can specify including what switch to use when you first created that user account.

[RedHatNewbie]

Sorry if I appeared to not have tried to work this for myself. I am new to Linux and did checkk the man pages for useradd. The only references to the new user password I was able to find were the "-c" flag which spoke of comments. The other was the "-p" switch which spoke of teh encrypted password as returned by crypt. It also said that the default was to disable the account. The only books I have said to use linuxconf, and I was able to do it that way; I just wanted to know how to do it from the command line. Thanks again for the help and, as I said, I gave it at least a fair shot before asking for help..

Jim

never feel bad about asking a question when you are starting out. it can take time to become familiar with all the resources available to you. once you become less intimidated by Linux you will find that answers are some times much more readily found by quick searches through manpages or resources such as google.com/linux. it also feels great when you can become more self suffcient.

welcome and enjoy linux and your time here.

[redhead]

At the bottom of 'man adduser' it says:

SEE ALSO
chfn(1), chsh(1), crypt(3), groupadd(8), groupdel(8),
groupmod(8), passwd(1), userdel(8), usermod(8)

This tells you, that 'man 1 passwd' will be something to look at aswell.