Adding a User in Arch Linux

Mon 15th June 2020 By David T. Sadler.

In a previous post I installed Arch Linux on my Thinkpad X220. Since it was a very minimal install there are no user accounts except for the root user. So to add myself as a user I need to use the useradd command.

$ useradd -m -s /bin/bash david

I used the below options with the command.

• -m Create the home directory for this account.
• -s /bin/bash Make bash the login shell for this account.
• david The name of the new user.

This creates a new account for me and also ensures that a home directory is created as /home/david.

The new account will require a password so assign one with the passwd command.

$ passwd david

New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: password updated successfully

Now all I have to do is logout of the root account.

$ logout

Then login with the new credentials to confirm that everything is okay.

suliman login: david
Password:

david@suliman:$

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Copyright © 2021 David T. Sadler.