To add new users to a system, we can use the command. You will need to have root privileges for this, so you need to prefix with sudo, e.g.

**Permissions, the initial user you create when setting up the pi, has sudo or admin privileges. Additional users will not. Unless you take steps to give that user those permissions.**

sudo useradd <user>

The rest of the process is interactive, in this example I am adding the user gopher to the raspberry Pi4 system we are also using for testing cron.

sudo adduser gopher
Adding user `gopher' ...
Adding new group `gopher' (1001) ...
Adding new user `gopher' (1001) with group `gopher (1001)' ...
Creating home directory `/home/gopher' ...
Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
New password: 
Retype new password: 
passwd: password updated successfully
Changing the user information for gopher
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
	Full Name []: Gopher
	Room Number []: 0
	Work Phone []: 0
	Home Phone []: 0
	Other []: 0
Is the information correct? [Y/n] y
Adding new user `gopher' to supplemental / extra groups `users' ...
Adding user `gopher' to group `users' ...

I can now login to the user gopher on the Raspberry Pi with

$ ssh gopher@192.168.1.202
gopher@192.168.1.202's password: 
Linux raspberrypi 6.12.20+rpt-rpi-v8 #1 SMP PREEMPT Debian 1:6.12.20-1+rpt1~bpo12+1 (2025-03-19) aarch64

The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
gopher@raspberrypi:~ $ 

To change the password on a GNU/Linux system, use

passwd

To delete a user, use the userdel command, I am not going into this here, so as with other commands, there is a man page

man userdel
userdel - delete a user account and related files

Tags

#Bash,#Bashscripting,#BashScripting#users,#adding

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