LinuxGuide.it > Linux Man Page: "usermod"

 

 
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The Linux Documentation Project maintains an archive of snaphots of the (English language) core Linux manual pages that are maintained by Michael Kerrisk. Corrections and additions are welcome, but review the "Help Wanted" list, first.

Man pages belonging to programs are usually distributed together with those programs. Therefore, the core Linux man-pages mainly contains the pages for system calls and library routines, special devices, and file formats. However, it also contains documentation for a few programs, in cases where the authors or maintainers of the program do not distribute man pages themselves.

This page is part of release 3.11 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages

 

man page(1) manual page Table of Contents

Name

usermod - modify a user account

Synopsis

usermod [options] LOGIN

Description

The usermod command modifies the system account files to reflect the changes that are specified on the command line.

Options

The options which apply to the usermod command are:

-a, --append
Add the user to the supplemental group(s). Use only with -G option.

-c, --comment COMMENT
The new value of the user’s password file comment field. It is normally modified using the chfn(1) utility.

-d, --home HOME_DIR
The user’s new login directory. If the -m option is given the contents of the current home directory will be moved to the new home directory, which is created if it does not already exist.

-e, --expiredate EXPIRE_DATE
The date on which the user account will be disabled. The date is specified in the format YYYY-MM-DD.

-f, --inactive INACTIVE
The number of days after a password expires until the account is permanently disabled. A value of 0 disables the account as soon as the password has expired, and a value of -1 disables the feature. The default value is -1.

-g, --gid GROUP
The group name or number of the user’s new initial login group. The group name must exist. A group number must refer to an already existing group. The default group number is 1.

-G, --groups GROUP1[,GROUP2,...[,GROUPN]]]
A list of supplementary groups which the user is also a member of. Each group is separated from the next by a comma, with no intervening whitespace. The groups are subject to the same restrictions as the group given with the -g option. If the user is currently a member of a group which is not listed, the user will be removed from the group. This behaviour can be changed via -a option, which appends user to the current supplementary group list.

-l, --login NEW_LOGIN
The name of the user will be changed from LOGIN to NEW_LOGIN. Nothing else is changed. In particular, the user’s home directory name should probably be changed to reflect the new login name.

-L, --lock
Lock a user’s password. This puts a ’!’ in front of the encrypted password, effectively disabling the password. You can’t use this option with -p or -U.

-o, --non-unique
When used with the -u option, this option allows to change the user ID to a non-unique value.

-p, --password PASSWORD
The encrypted password, as returned by crypt(3) .

-s, --shell SHELL
The name of the user’s new login shell. Setting this field to blank causes the system to select the default login shell.

-u, --uid UID
The numerical value of the user’s ID. This value must be unique, unless the -o option is used. The value must be non-negative. Values between 0 and 999 are typically reserved for system accounts. Any files which the user owns and which are located in the directory tree rooted at the user’s home directory will have the file user ID changed automatically. Files outside of the user’s home directory must be altered manually.

-U, --unlock
Unlock a user’s password. This removes the ’!’ in front of the encrypted password. You can’t use this option with -p or -L.

-Z, --selinux-user SEUSER
The SELinux user for the user’s login. The default is to leave this field blank, which causes the system to select the default SELinux user.

Caveats

usermod will not allow you to change the name of a user who is logged in. You must make certain that the named user is not executing any processes when this command is being executed if the user’s numerical user ID is being changed. You must change the owner of any crontab files manually. You must change the owner of any at jobs manually. You must make any changes involving NIS on the NIS server.

Files

/etc/group
Group account information.

/etc/passwd
User account information.

/etc/shadow
Secure user account information.

See Also

chfn(1) , chsh(1) , passwd(1) , crypt(3) , gpasswd(8) , groupadd(8) , groupdel(8) , groupmod(8) , login.defs(5) , useradd(8) , userdel(8) .


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