You will now be able to see that all the fields in the Users dialog are enabled for you to work on:Ĭlick the Add User button.
Please provide your password and then click the Authenticate button. The following Authentication dialog will open for you to provide authentication information as an administrator because only this way you will be able to create or edit user accounts: Click the Unlock button located in the top right corner of the Users dialog. You will need to provide authentication in order to work further with this dialog. Please note that all the fields will be disabled by default. Click your username and then select Account Settings as follows: Open the Account Settings dialog either through Ubuntu Dash or by clicking the down-arrow located at the top right corner of your Ubuntu screen. Please follow these steps in order to add a user through Ubuntu’s graphical interface:
You can add users to the Ubuntu system through the UI however, advanced user management needs to be done through the command line. It is important to note that you must be an authorized sudoer user to perform all the user management operations explained in this article. It is given full root privileges and is added to the list of sudoers in the /etc/sudoers file. By default, the first user created during the installation of Ubuntu is given the sudo privileges. With the sudo command, you must specify a password, which helps keep the user in charge of all actions as an administrator. By default, Ubuntu does not allow the root user to log in directly (however, other Linux distributions such as Debian and CentOS allow direct root login) therefore, Ubuntu has created a functionality called “sudo” that allows you to perform various administrative operations. So let’s first understand what root is? Understanding the root userīefore we start with user management, it is important to know something about the root user in Linux. Please note that you must have root privileges to perform the tasks described here. We run the commands and processes described in this article on an Ubuntu 20.04 system. It covers user and group management procedures, both from the user interface and from the command line, that you can perform with very simple steps. This article introduces simple techniques you can use to have effective control over user management. If user management on your system is not effective, you may have to compromise security and access to the private and sensitive information on your system. You should avoid using root for maintenance tasks.User management becomes a critical consideration when you want to add multiple users to the system. As a best practice, use this sudo user for server administration. Verify you are the new user with whoami, then test sudo access with sudo whoami, which should return root. Ĭhanging the user information for example_userĮnter the new value, or press ENTER for the defaultĪdd the new user to the sudo group.
Ĭreating home directory `/home/example_user'. Īdding new user `example_user' (1001) with group `example_user'. # adduser example_userĪdding new group `example_user' (1001). You can enter values for the user information, or press ENTER to leave those fields blank. This guide applies to the following versions:Ĭreate a new user account with the adduser command. After launching your Vultr VPS, your first task as root should be to set up a non-root user with sudo access. Performing server administration as a non-root user is a best practice for security. Are we missing a guide for your target system? Request one, or submit your own! Introduction