To add a user, there are two standard utilities: adduser - interactive useradd - scriptable Try them both and find out. One will walk you through the process of adding a user step by step. In other words, it will prompt you for all of the information that you may want to add for each user. The other will make you use cute little switches to add the details for your new user. adduser: adduser [options] [--home DIR] [--shell|-s SHELL] [--no-create-home] [--uid ID] [--firstuid ID] [--lastuid ID] [--ingroup GROUP | --gid ID] [--disabled-password] [--disabled-login] [--gecos GECOS] [--add_extra_groups] user -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- useradd: useradd [options] LOGIN adduser will prompt you for all of the new users information. i.e. password, fullname, etc. useradd will prompt you for nothing, and you'll have to set your new user up on your own. addgroup wheel usermod -G wheel user -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To add a group, there are two standard utilities: addgroup - interactive groupadd - scriptable -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Example of adding group "wheel" and assigning a user "user" to the group: addgroup wheel usermod -G wheel user