LinuxMall.com Got Linux? CD Offer
Newbie's Linux Manual
Logging-in and Creating a User Account
by Laurence Hunter
[ Home ] [ Contents ] [ Download*] [ Previous ] [ Next ]
* In Linux enter: unzip nlm.zip
The Dangers of root

In Linux, everyone gets their own user account. These user accounts are created by the superuser, a.k.a. root. root is God. He/she has the absolute power to create and destroy anything in the dark and mysterious domain that is your Linux installation.

Because being logged-in as root is both dangerous to the well-being of your Linux installation, and unnecessary (as you'll soon find out), your first port of call is to create yourself a user account.

To do this, log-in to the only account available at the moment - the root account. To log-in, simply enter the name of the account, followed by the account's password, like so (you set the root password during installation, remember?):

localhost login: root
Password: _

Unlike Windows, everything in Linux is case-sensitive. The user root is not the user Root. Always remember this!

Now that you're logged in, create a user account. To do this, enter:

adduser guest
Note

To allow me to explain things fully and efficiently, we will use this guest account for the remainder of the book. To create a personal account for yourself, and others at a later date, simply replace guest with something else, e.g.:

adduser laurence

Now give guest a password, by entering:

passwd guest

...which will prompt you to enter a password and then re-enter it for verification. Don't worry about nothing being echoed to the screen when you enter your password, Linux is very security-conscientious. Even though I personally favour asterixes (*) being echoed to the screen, the creator of the login program felt it necessary to achieve maximum security.

Also, unless security is an issue for you, ignore any "BAD PASSWORD" message that may appear, and continue regardless.

Now log-out of the root account by pressing Ctrl+D, and log-in to your newly created user account, like so:

localhost login: guest
Password: _
Every Account Has a "Home Directory"

The Linux filesytem is not unlike the Windows/DOS filesystem. In Windows/DOS, the root directory of your hard drive partition is C:. In Linux, the root directory is /. It is called the "root directory" because all other directories stem from it like a tree (guess that's why they call it a "directory tree").

Contained in the root directory (/) is a subdirectory called home. And inside the home directory, there is now a directory with the same name as the account you've just created i.e. /home/guest (referred to as, "guest's home directory"). It's in this directory that all guest's personal files are stored, including his/her personal configuration files. These "local" configuration files are an important aspect of Linux, and will be dealt with later.

[ Home ] [ Contents ] [ Download*] [ Previous ] [ Next ]
* In Linux enter: unzip nlm.zip

W W W . L I N U X D O T . O R G

The Newbie's Linux Manual is reproduced on LinuxMall.com by permission. The Newbie's Linux Manual is written and maintained by Laurence Hunter. You can find much more of Laurence's work at his site: www.Linuxdot.org

© 1999 Linuxdot.org | Manual's Copyright Terms