path: root/adduser/adduser.8

.\" Copyright (c) 1995-1996 Wolfram Schneider <wosch@FreeBSD.org>. Berlin.
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.\" Copyright (c) 2002 Michael Telahun Makonnen <makonnen@pacbell.net>
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.Dd August 14, 2002
.Dt ADDUSER 8
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm adduser
.Nd command for adding new users
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Bk -words
.Op Fl CENhq
.Op Fl G Ar groups
.Op Fl L Ar login_class
.Op Fl d Ar partition
.Op Fl f Ar file
.Op Fl k Ar dotdir
.Op Fl m Ar message_file
.Op Fl s Ar shell
.Op Fl u Ar uid_start
.Op Fl w Ar type
.Ek
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm adduser
program is a shell script, implemented around the
.Xr pw 8
command, for adding new users.
It creates passwd/group entries, a home directory,
copies dotfiles and sends the new user a welcome message.
It supports two modes of operation. It may be used interactively
at the command line to add one user at a time or it may be directed
to get the list of new users from a file and operate in batch mode
without requiring any user interaction.
.Sh RESTRICTIONS
.Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
.It Sy username
Login name.
The user name is restricted to whatever
.Xr pw 8
will accept. Generally this means it
may contain only lowercase characters or digits.
Maximum length
is 16 characters.
The reasons for this limit are "Historical".
Given that people have traditionally wanted to break this
limit for aesthetic reasons, it's never been of great importance to break
such a basic fundamental parameter in UNIX.
You can change
.Dv UT_NAMESIZE
in
.Pa /usr/include/utmp.h
and recompile the
world; people have done this and it works, but you will have problems
with any precompiled programs, or source that assumes the 8-character
name limit and NIS.
The NIS protocol mandates an 8-character username.
If you need a longer login name for e-mail addresses,
you can define an alias in
.Pa /etc/mail/aliases .
.It Sy full name
This is typically known as the gecos field and usually contains
the user's full name. Additionally, it may contain a comma separated
list of values such as office number and work and home phones. If the
name contains an amperstand it will be replaced by the capitalized
login name when displayed by other programs.
The
.Ql Pa \&:
character is not allowed.
.It Sy shell
Only valid shells from the shell database (/etc/shells) are allowed. In
addition, only the base name of the shell is necessary, not the full path.
.It Sy uid
Automatically generated or your choice. It must be less than 32000.
.It Sy gid/login group
Automatically generated or your choice. It must be less than 32000.
.It Sy password
You may choose an empty password, disable the password, use a
randomly generated password or specify your own plaintext password,
which will be encrypted before being stored in the user database.
.El
.Sh UNIQUE GROUPS
Perhaps you're missing what
.Em can
be done with this scheme that falls apart
with most other schemes.
With each user in his/her own group the user can
safely run with a umask of 002 instead of the usual 022
and create files in their home directory
without worrying about others being able to change them.
.Pp
For a shared area you create a separate uid/gid (like cvs or ncvs on freefall),
you place each person that should be able to access this area into that new
group.
.Pp
This model of uid/gid administration allows far greater flexibility than lumping
users into groups and having to muck with the umask when working in a shared
area.
.Pp
I have been using this model for almost 10 years and found that it works
for most situations, and has never gotten in the way.  (Rod Grimes)
.Sh CONFIGURATION
The
.Nm
utility reads its configuration information from
.Ar /etc/adduser.conf .
If this file does not exist it will use predefined defaults. While
this file may be edited by hand the safer option is to use the
.Op Fl C
command line argument. With this argument
.Nm
will start interactive input, save the answers to its prompts in
.Ar /etc/adduser.conf ,
and promptly exit without modifying the user
database. Options specified on the command line will take precedence over
any values saved in this file.
.Sh OPTIONS
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl C
Create new configuration file and exit. This option is mutually exclusive
with the
.Op Fl f
option.
.It Fl d Ar partition
Home partition. Default partition, under which all user directories
will be located.
.It Fl E
Disable the account. This option will lock the account by prepending
the string *LOCKED* to the password field. The account may be unlocked
by the super-user with the
.Xr pw 8
command:
.Pp
.Dl "pw unlock [name|uid]"
.It Fl f Ar file
Get the list of accounts to create from
.Ar file .
If
.Ar file
is '`-'', then get the list from standard input. If this option
is specified
.Nm
will operate in batch mode and will not seek any user input. If an
error is encountered while processing an account it will write a
message to standard error and move to the next account. The format
of the input file is described below.
.It Fl G Ar groups
Additional group(s). By default the user name is used as the login group.
This option allows the user to specify additional groups to add users to.
.It Fl h
Print a summary of options and exit.
.It Fl k Ar directory
Copy files from
.Ar directory
into the home
directory of new users,
.Ql Pa dot.foo
will be renamed to
.Ql Pa .foo .
.It Fl L Ar login_class
Set default login class.
.It Fl m Ar file
Send new users a welcome message from
.Ar file .
Specifying a value of
.Ar no
for
.Ar file
causes no message to be sent to new users. Please note that the message
file can reference the internal variables of the
.Nm
script.
.It Fl N
Do not read the default configuration file.
.It Fl q
Minimal user feedback. In particular, the random password will not be echoed to
standard output.
.It Fl s Ar shell
Default shell for new users. The
.Ar shell
argument must be the base name of the shell , NOT the full path.
It must exist in
.Ar /etc/shells
to be considered a valid shell.
.It Fl u Ar uid
Use uid's from
.Ar uid
on up.
.It Fl w Ar type
Password type. The
.Nm
utility allows the user to specify what type of password to create.
The
.Ar type
argument may have one of the following values:
.Bl -tag -width ".Dv random"
.It Dv no
Disable the password. Instead of an encrypted string the passowrd field
will contain a single '`*'' character.
The user may not login until the super-user
manually enables the password.
.It Dv none
Use an empty string as the password.
.It Dv yes
Use a user supplied string as the password. In interactive mode
the user will be prompted for the password. In batch mode, the
last (10th) field in the line is assumed to be the password.
.It Dv random
Generate a random string and use it as a password. The password will
be echoed to standard output. In addition it will be available for
inclusion in the message file in the
.Ar randompass
environment variable.
.El
.Sh FORMAT
.Bl -tag -width Ds -compact
When the
.Op Fl f
option is used the account information must be stored in a specific
format. All empty lines or lines beginning with a
.Ql Pa #
will be ignored. All other lines must contain ten colon (:) separated
fields as described below. Command line options do not take precedence
over values in the fields. Only the password field may contain a
.Ql Pa :
character as part of the string.
.Pp
.Dl "name:uid:gid:class:change:expire:gecos:home_dir:shell:password"
.Bl -tag -width ".Dv password"
.It Dv name
Login name. This field may not be empty.
.It Dv uid
Numeric login user id. If this field is left empty it will be automatically
generated.
.It Dv gid
Numeric primary group id. If this field is left empty a group with the
same name as the user name will be created and its gid will be used
instead.
.It Dv class
Login class. This field may be left empty.
.It Dv change
Password ageing.
This field denotes the password change date for the account. The format of this
field is the same as the format of the
.Op Fl p
argument to
.Xr pw 8 .
It may be 'dd-mmm-yy[yy]', where 'dd' is for the day, 'mmm' is for the month
in numeric or alphabetical format: '10 or Oct', and 'yy[yy]' is the four or two digit year.
To denote a time relative to the current date the format
is: '+n[mhdwoy]', where 'n' denotes a number, followed by the Minutes, Hours,
Days, Weeks, Months or Years after which the password must be changed. 
This field may be left empty to turn it off.
.It Dv expire
Account expiration. This field denotes the expiry date of the account. The account may
not be used after the specified date. The format of this field is the same as that
for password ageing. This field may be left empty to turn it off.
.It Dv gecos
Full name and other extra information about the user.
.It Dv home_dir
Home directory. If this field is left empty it will be automatically
created by appending the username to the home partition.
.It Dv shell
Login Shell. This field should contain the full path to a valid login shell.
.It Dv password
User password. This field should contain a plaintext string, which will
be encrypted before being placed in the user database. If the password type is 'yes'
and this field is empty it is assumed the account will have any empty password. If
the password type is 'random' and this field is NOT empty its contents will be used
as a password. This field will be ignored if the
.Op Fl p
flag is used with a
.Ar no
or
.Ar none
argument. Be carefull not to terminate this field with a closing ':' because it will
be treated as part of the password.
.El
.Sh FILES
.Bl -tag -width /etc/master.passwdxx -compact
.It Pa /etc/master.passwd
user database
.It Pa /etc/group
group database
.It Pa /etc/shells
shell database
.It Pa /etc/login.conf
login classes database
.It Pa /etc/adduser.conf
configuration file for adduser
.It Pa /etc/adduser.message
message file for adduser
.It Pa /usr/share/skel
skeletal login directory
.It Pa /var/log/adduser
logfile for adduser
.El
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr chpass 1 ,
.Xr passwd 1 ,
.Xr aliases 5 ,
.Xr group 5 ,
.Xr login.conf 5 ,
.Xr passwd 5 ,
.Xr shells 5 ,
.Xr pw 8 ,
.Xr pwd_mkdb 8 ,
.Xr rmuser 8 ,
.Xr vipw 8 ,
.Xr yp 8
.Sh HISTORY
The
.Nm
command appeared in
.Fx 2.1 .
.Sh AUTHORS
This manual page and the original script, in perl, was written by
.An Wolfram Schneider <wosch@FreeBSD.org>. The replacement script, written as a Bourne
shell script with some enhancements, and the man page modification that
came with it were done by
.An Mike Makonnen <mtm@identd.net> .
.Sh BUGS
In order for
.Nm
to correctly expand variables such as $username and $randompass in the message sent
to new users it must let the shell evaluate each line of the message file. This means
that shell commands can also be embedded in the message file. The
.Nm
utility attemps to mitigate the possibility of an attacker using this feature by
refusing to evaluate the file if it is not owned and writeable only by the root user.
In addition, shell special characters and operators will have to be escaped when
used in the message file.
.Pp
Also, password ageing and account expiry times are currently setable only in batch mode.
The user should be able to set them in interactive mode as well.