useradd question

fossilet · 03-09-2011, 12:47 AM

I encountered a question in the Redhat Skills Assessment regarding useradd:

Which of the following CANNOT be defined when you create a user account with useradd?

a* A password expiration date.
b* The user's primary group.
c* The user's default shell.
d* The user's NIS or LDAP group.
e* The user's home directory.

Which is the corret answer? I have my own thinking which will be explained later.

andrewthomas · 03-09-2011, 12:53 AM

D. The user's NIS or LDAP group.

Code:

-e, --expiredate EXPIRE_DATE 
The date on which the user account will be disabled. The date is specified in the format YYYY-MM-DD. 

-g, --gid GROUP 
The group name or number of the user's initial login group. The group name must exist. A group number must refer to an already existing group. /etc/default/useradd.

-s, --shell SHELL 
The name of the user's login shell. The default is to leave this field blank, which causes the system to select the default login shell. 

-d, --home HOME_DIR 
The new user will be created using HOME_DIR as the value for the user's login directory. The default is to append the LOGIN name to BASE_DIR and use that as the login directory name. The directory HOME_DIR does not have to exist but will not be created if it is missing.

fossilet · 03-09-2011, 01:17 AM

In the useradd man page, -e DATE specifies the date on which the account will be expired, not the password expiration date. The password expiration date can be changed via -M option of chage command. In some man page (I forget which), it says account expiration is different from password expiration.

Should I say, a) and d) are both the correct answer?