add-a-new-user-in-centos.md

Add a New User in CentOS

When working with Linux machines. It's generally recommended that you create a non-root user to perform regular tasks to avoid potential dangerous commands that required root privileges.

To create a new user in CentOS, follow the steps:

Switch to the root user to gain the necessary privileges to create a new user. You can do the running:

su root

Create a new user with the adduser command. Replace joshua with the desired username:

adduser joshua

This will add the user to the end of the /etc/passwd file.

Verify that the new user has been created by running the following command:

cat /etc/passwd

This will display a list of all users on the system. The new user should be included in the list. See the example output below:

# ... more users in the above
postfix:x:89:89::/var/spool/postfix:/sbin/nologin
ntp:x:38:38::/etc/ntp:/sbin/nologin
tcpdump:x:72:72::/:/sbin/nologin
ohara:x:1000:1000:ohara:/home/ohara:/bin/bash
joshua:x:1001:1001::/home/joshua:/bin/bash # The one we just added

Once the user is added, you will also need to assign a password for it by running the following command. Replace joshua with the username you created:

passwd joshua

And you will often want to add this user to the sudoers file to allow it to perform administrative tasks. To do this, run the following command to open the sudoers file:

visudo

Scroll to the end of the file and add the following line, replacing joshua with the name of your new user:

joshua ALL=(ALL) ALL

Save and exit the sudoers file.

You new user should now be able to perform administrative tasks using the sudo command.