Creating users and groups in Linux
Note: To try out the examples in this document, you would need root access.
To create a new user you use the adduser command. To add a user by called linuxjunky:
$ adduser linuxjunky
If you get a command not found error
$ /usr/sbin/adduser linuxjunky
To assign a password to your new user
$ passwd linuxuser
To grant ownership of a file to the new user
$ chown linuxjunky filename
To change grant ownership of a directory to the new user
$ chown -R linuxjunky myfolder/
Suppose you have three users (john, jim, jake) each of whom require ownership of a directory. For example the web/ directory. The best way to do this would be to create a group. Make them members of this group and grant ownership to this group.
To create a group:
$ groupadd webmanagers
or
$ /usr/sbin/groupadd webmanagers
This would add a line such as the following to the end of your /etc/group
webmanagers:x:507:
Use a text editor such as vi to change this line the following
webmanagers:x:507:john,jim,jake
To grant ownership to a file
chgrp webmanagers index.html
To grant ownership to a directory
chgrp -Rv webmanagers web/