When you installed Red Hat Linux, you were asked to create a root password
— a password for the root account, which is used by the system
administrator. At that time, you were also able to create additional
user accounts.
If you did not create a user account during the installation, this
should be your first task. There are two ways to do this: from a GUI
(using linuxconf) and from a shell prompt.
To create a user account from a GUI:
Log in from the console or from a graphical screen.
Open a terminal window. In GNOME and KDE you can click on the Terminal Emulation icon on the panel at the bottom of the
desktop. If you are working without a GUI, you are already at a shell
prompt.
Type su - at the command line and press
[Enter] to log in as root. You will then be asked to
enter the root password.
Type linuxconf at the command line and press
[Enter]. You will get a help screen the first time
you open linuxconf. Click on
Quit to see the
linuxconf screen.
Click on the + next to Users
Accounts to expand this menu.
Click on the + next to Normal.
Click on User Accounts.
In the Users Accounts window that appears on the
right, click on Add.
Fill in the login name you want this user to have and the user's
full name in the appropriate fields. Every account belongs to at
least one group. Groups are used to determine file access
permissions. The default group for a user account will be the same
as the login name.
Fill in any other fields you choose to and click on
Accept.
Enter a password for the new user (read on in this chapter for more
on selecting user names and passwords). You will be asked to
re-enter it for confirmation.
The new user should now appear in the list of users. You can delete
accounts in linuxconf by selecting a user
from the User Accounts list and then clicking on
the Del button. To edit account info, select an
account from the User Accounts list, change the
fields you want to, and click on Act/Changes.
For more information on advanced linuxconf
functions, click on the Help buttons
in linuxconf.
To create a user account from a shell prompt:
At the shell prompt, log in as root.
Type useradd followed by a space and the
username for the new account at the command line and press
[Enter].
Now type passwd followed by a space and the
username again.
The shell prompt should display New UNIX
password. This is asking you to type the password for the new
account.
Type the password again for confirmation. You will see the following
message, indicating that the new account has been created:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully |
 | Choosing Account Names |
|---|
| | Often, user accounts are just variations on the user's name, such as
jsmith for John Smith. User account names can
be anything from your name, initials, or birthday to something more
creative.
|
 | What is a Secure Password? |
|---|
| | You can be fancy or plain when you pick a user account name, but take
precautions when you choose a password. The password is the key to
your account, so it should be both unique and easy for you to
remember. Your password should be at least six characters (actually,
it can be 256 characters long if you enabled MD5 passwords during the
installation, though you probably don't need that many). You can mix
upper- and lowercase letters, as well as numbers and characters. Avoid
easy selections, such as "qwerty" or "password." If you want to pick
an easy-to-remember but somewhat unique password, consider a variation
of a word, such as "a!rPl8nE" for "airplane." If you need more
information about passwords, see Chapter 10.
|
You can exit from a terminal window by clicking the
X button on the upper right corner of the window,
or by typing exit at the prompt.
