In this lesson, we will follow the lifecycle of a user account on a Linux/Unix system from creation, through modification, to deletion. We will also cover how to manage user groups.

Creating a User Account

useradd (Create New User Account) Let's start by creating a new user account named john:

sudo useradd -m -s /bin/bash john

Here is a breakdown of what that command does:

We can run list the contents of /home and should see the users new home directory:

ll /home/
# drwxr-x---  2 john     john     4096 Oct  3 01:08 john/

Additionally, we can switch to the john user by running the following command:

sudo su john

This will show us that we have switch to the john user:

john@ip-10-0-7-42:/home/iacadmin$

We can exit that user by typing 'exit':

exit

This will show that you have switched back to your other user account (in our labs it is iacadmin):

iacadmin@ip-10-0-7-42:~$ 

Modifying the User Account

usermod (Modify Existing User Account) Now, let’s change John’s username to john_doe and update his home directory:

sudo usermod -l john_doe john  # Changes the username
sudo usermod -d /new/home/dir john_doe  # Changes the home directory

Deleting the User Account

deluser (Delete User Account) Finally, let’s delete the john_doe user account:

sudo deluser --remove-home john_doe

We covered:

See you in the next lesson!

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