On Sun, 4 Aug 1996, Alex Roetter wrote:

> for some reason, after i add a user (by adding them to /etc/passwd) su and
> finger and chown all reutn unknown uid errors.
> i tried adding them to /etc/master.paswd and that doesn't seem to do it
> either.

OK, corrections/verification on this would be nice, but here's how I do it:

As root:

- run vipw (if you don't want to use vi, make sure you have your EDITOR
   and VISUAL environment variables set to whatever you *do* want to use),
   then vipw will use that editor
- in vipw, copy the line of an existing user, but make up a new uid for this
   new user (and make sure their gid is correct), also set the location for
   home dir and shell (their shell is in /etc/shells, right?)
- execute "save" in whatever editor vipw has you using, then quit.  vipw will
   rebuild the pwd.db (password database) for you, as well as generating 
   a new old-style /etc/passwd (the file you were editing was 
   /etc/master.passwd)
- make a home directory for the new user, copy in whatever skeletal files you
   (hopefully) keep in /etc/share/skel, and chmod everything to their uid and
   gid.. if you used vipw correctly (it reported no errors) it should work

Happy Rooting!
--David Bushong

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     _/   _/ _/   _/ _/   _/  David P. Bushong -- (510) 845-3271         _/
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