[CentOS] User creation problem

[Anne Wilson]

On Saturday 15 March 2008 14:17, Jim Perrin wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 10:11 AM, Anne Wilson
>
> <cannewilson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > system-config-users  is giving me a problem.  I need to create a user
> >  called 'groupware', without a home directory, and belonging only to a
> >  non-privileged group.  I can create the user, but it sets it to belong
> > to the group 'users'.  When I try to set its default to 'nobody' and
> > delete the 'users' entry it tells me that I must enter a home directory.
> >
> >  How can I get around this?
>
> Mostly, you don't. Every user has to have a home directory, though
> nothing says it has to be in /home
>
> Take a look at how the system accounts for things like rpm or rpc or
> others are handled. I'd also recommend using useradd as it gives you a
> bit more flexibility when creating users. with useradd you can use -g
> and -G to see the primary and secondary group memberships as you need.
> Also, unless this account will be logging in or for some other reason
> requires a shell, make sure that the shell for the user is set to
> /sbin/nologin.

That's helpful, thanks.  It is for handling imap under kontact, so I've 
created the group groupware and left it as a member of that group.  I think 
that will be OK, but I'll have to see when I've got the rest of it set up :-)

Anne