Hi, On Fri, Nov 23, 2012 at 07:56:24AM -0600, Nate Bargmann wrote: > * On 2012 23 Nov 06:14 -0600, Andrei POPESCU wrote: > > On Vi, 16 nov 12, 16:33:17, Nate Bargmann wrote: > > > * On 2012 16 Nov 14:02 -0600, james gray wrote: > > > > i am using vim to add the one and only name in a usr account to the > > > > groups > > > > file for printing. > > > > > > I would use, as super user: > > > > > > # usermod -Ga lp <username> > > > > On Debian the 'adduser' tool should be used.
Maybe this is a bit strong statement. I would just say the use of adduser on Debian system makes life easy on Debian. > Unfortunately, the name alone doesn't lend itself to knowing that it > will modify a user account although the man page says: > > Add an existing user to an existing group > If called with two non-option arguments, adduser will add an > existing user to an existing group. > > The page is silent as to whether existing group membership is preserved > as with the command example I offered. To know it would be required for > each adminstrator to test this command due to this documentation bug. I think there is a reason why adduser is not called changeuser (or updateuser) (just joking though). I am very certain this only "ADD" things. If it REMOVES something, this is a serious documentation bug not to mention it. But it just works as expected... I think. > In this case, 'usermod' provides the adminstrator *exactly* the options Although adduser for this is the popular utility to use here and the one I probably use, usermod seems to be as legitimate utility and it comes as a part of shadow-utils i.e. the passwd package. Both should work. Otherwise, file a bug report :-) > needed to modify a user account. A single or multiple groups may be > easily added, or the group list may be passed in such a way as to easily > remove an account from several groups at once while preserving or adding > membership in those passed. If adduser should do such things, there should be a lot of unhappy people filing bug report ... > I don't see that capability in 'adduser' > although there is the complementary 'deluser' which removes a sepcific > user from a specific group. To remove an account from multiple groups > would require multiple invocations. > > Power or simplicity? The choice is yours. Power -- certainly. If you read /usr/share/doc/adduser/examples/README, there are good power tools described. For not so much involved like me, adduser is a friendlier interactive frontend to useradd. At least, this is my impression and that is why I used it for Debian Reference. I google and find interesting old post here. > Subject: Re: adduser, useradd: are there any differences > From: "Peter J. Holzer" <hjp-deb...@hjp.at> > Date: Sun, 12 Sep 2004 20:55:39 +0200 > On 2004-09-12 18:12:02 +0200, Roland Wegmann wrote: ... > useradd and groupadd are the posix or SUS-standardized tools to create > users and groups. You can expect them to work (almost) identically on all > Linux > distributions as well as on HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, ... > > adduser and groupadd are distribution specific wrappers which make it > simpler to create users which conform to some (distribution-specific or > local) policy. The options vary wildly between different distributions > and other UNIXes may not have these commands at all. (As I checked web, FEDORA/CENTOS/GENTOO, adduser seems to be the symlink to useradd.) Osamu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20121124131224.GB22175@goofy.localdomain