24.3 Creating User Accounts

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.

24.3 Creating User Accounts

24.3.1 About umask and the setgid and Restricted Deletion Bits

To create a user account by using the useradd command:

Enter the following command to create a user account:
```
# useradd [options] username
```
You can specify options to change the account's settings from the default ones.
By default, if you specify a user name argument but do not specify any options, useradd creates a locked user account using the next available UID and assigns a user private group (UPG) rather than the value defined for GROUP as the user's group.
Assign a password to the account to unlock it:
```
# passwd username
```
The command prompts you to enter a password for the account.
If you want to change the password non-interactively (for example, from a script), use the chpasswd command instead:
```
echo "username:password" | chpasswd
```

Alternatively, you can use the newusers command to create a number of user accounts at the same time.

For more information, see the chpasswd(8), newusers(8), passwd(1), and useradd(8) manual pages.