When creating a user account do you ned to copy certain files from the dir etc/skel, because i,ve added new users and their accounts work fine, but i have read that this is necessary.

Regards
CropA

I think it all depends on how you set the users up!
If you create them like by adduser....addgroup...etc, then it automatically does this for you, The only time I ever notice that I need to copy the skel files over is when I add them manually to the /etc/passwd file.

it's all in man adduser ( or man useradd). current configuration is stored in /etc/default/useradd. But actually, when you add new user with no new options the files from /etc/skel are automatically copied to user's dir ( unless you have chosen no to create home directory in /etc/default/useradd)

if the user's account is already there, you could replace their home dir with the default info in /etc/skel with
rsync /home/<user> | chown -R <user>:<user> /home/<user>
-also handy fixing user accounts when they screw up their settings beyond repair ;)

What exactly is in the etc/skel dir, and do i need it?because i,ve manually created a user in the passwd file and the user account works fine, but when you run the adduser script it automatically dumps the skel files into the usr home dir.

Regard
CropA

The /etc/skel dir is mainly there for the adduser program to provide you with a default template for creating new users so you don't HAVE to do it manually. This will provide them (new users) with all the default X settings, shell settings, desktop settings, icons, etc...(skel is short for skeleton)--you can also create modifications based on this dir.
ex. in my office we have a dir called "/etc/skel.csr" and a modified "assuser" script called "addcsr" this way all we have to do to add another user in the "csr" group, we just type "addcsr <username>" and it creates an account/homedir for the user that is identical to all the other "csr" accounts-can save a lot of time for administration.
Hope It Helps! ;)