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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.
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.
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!
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