The software described in this documentation is either in Extended Support or Sustaining Support. See https://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/enterprise-linux-support-policies-069172.pdf for more information.
Oracle recommends that you upgrade the software described by this documentation as soon as possible.
To display the default settings for an account use the following command:
# useradd -D
GROUP=100
HOME=/home
INACTIVE=-1
EXPIRE=
SHELL=/bin/bash
SKEL=/etc/skel
CREATE_MAIL_SPOOL=yes
INACTIVE specifies after how many days the
system locks an account if a user's password expires. If set to 0,
the system locks the account immediately. If set to -1, the system
does not lock the account.
SKEL defines a template directory, whose
contents are copied to a newly created user’s home directory.
The contents of this directory should match the default shell
defined by SHELL.
You can specify options to useradd -D to change
the default settings for user accounts. For example, to change the
defaults for INACTIVE, HOME
and SHELL:
# useradd -D -f 3 -b /home2 -s /bin/sh
If you change the default login shell, you would usually also
create a new SKEL template directory with
contents that are appropriate to the new shell.
If you specify /sbin/nologin for a user's
SHELL, that user cannot log into the system
directly but processes can run with that user's ID. This setting
is typically used for services that run as users other than
root.
The default settings are stored in the
/etc/default/useradd file.
For more information, see Section 24.8, “Configuring Password Ageing” and the
useradd(8) manual page.