Executing Commands with Elevated Privileges

The following commands must be prefaced with the sudo command. Please see RootSudo for information on using sudo. (sudo is short for superuser do).

Adding a New Group

The addgroup command is used to create a new group in the system. To create a new group, type:

sudo addgroup foobar

The above command will create a new group called foobar.

Adding a New User

The adduser command is used to create a new user on the system. To create a new user, type:

adduser foobar

which will create a new user called foobar.

Add or Change a User Password

The passwd command is used to assign a new password to a new user or change the current password for an existing user. To add a password or change the password for the user foobar, type:

passwd foobar

For new users, this will generate a prompt to enter the new password. For an existing user, there will be a prompt for the existing password before the prompt for a new password.

Assign User to Group

To assign the user foobar to the group barfoo, type:

adduser foobar barfoo