hi

I have debian etch stable installed.
howto add a new user without his home directory using command line ?

kind regards
cccc

Run the following command as root

#adduser nameofuser

Where name of user is the log-in name that you want for the new user. This will also create a new home directory for the new user.

-M should be used to create without home directoty

Just out of curiosity. Why would you want to create a new user without their own home directory?

u can use this options with command [ useradd ]

-r
This flag is used to create a system account. That is, a user with a UID lower than the value of UID_MIN defined in /etc/login.defs and whose password does not expire. Note that useradd will not create a home directory for such an user, regardless of the default setting in /etc/login.defs. You have to specify -m option if you want a home directory for a system account to be created. This is an option added by Red Hat.

-M
The user home directory will not be created, even if the system wide settings from /etc/login.defs is to create home dirs.

Hitest, there are plenty of reasons to do this, for example the user apache on redhat has a home directory of /var/www which already exists. Note the difference between having a home directory and creating one when you add a user.


cccc, why didn't you check the man page for this?

Bill

I don't know why, but on my Etch install - at least in the VM one that I'm using at the mo, useradd does not create a home directory by default, you have to pass the lowercase -m switch to get it to do it.

I'm pretty sure that's the case on my 2 installs at home as well. (I've felt the love for deb in a big way and have it running all over the place .

create a user without home directory: