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Re: adduser, useradd: are there any differences



On 2004-09-12 18:12:02 +0200, Roland Wegmann wrote:
> I am going to configure clamav on my debian system. the documentation of 
> clamav suggest to create a new user and group and shows the commmands to do 
> that (http://www.clamav.net/doc/0.75.1/html/node12.html)
> 
> 	# groupadd clamav
> 	# useradd -g clamav -s /bin/false -c "Clam AntiVirus" clamav
> 
> In debian I normally use the commands 'adduser' and 'addgroup' (I didn't know 
> the commands 'useradd' and 'groupadd'). Are 'adduser' and 'addgroup' debian 
> synonyms for 'useradd' and 'groupadd'? I checked the manpages and I have the 
> feeling they are synonyms.

Not quite. If you look more closely at the man pages you will see that
the options are different. 

useradd and groupadd are the posix or SUS-standardized tools to create
users and groups. You can expect them to work (almost) identically on all Linux
distributions as well as on HP-UX, Solaris, AIX, ...

adduser and groupadd are distribution specific wrappers which make it
simpler to create users which conform to some (distribution-specific or
local) policy. The options vary wildly between different distributions
and other UNIXes may not have these commands at all.

> So can I replace in the above mentioned commands groupadd and useradd
> with addgroup and adduser respectivelly?

Yes. (But check the options)

	hp

-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | Je höher der Norden, desto weniger wird
|_|_) | Sysadmin WSR       | überhaupt gesprochen, also auch kein Dialekt.
| |   | hjp@hjp.at         | Hallig Gröde ist fast gänzlich dialektfrei.
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ |   -- Hannes Petersen in desd

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