Create a new user account in AIX(CLI and smitty)

After I wrote many blogs about how to list(lsuer) and change(chuser) the attributes of a user, I asked myself why I don`t write a blog about creating a user! 

Basically, We have 2 route to go through to create a user, CLI and smitty.

Let`s start with the CLI:

Simply, run the following command to have a user called amer:

#mkuser amer

Wow, congratulations you have a user called amer and to check all its attributes –simply – run:

#lsuser amer

Ready to know how to create a user using smitty?

#smitty mkuser

After, you specify all the required iteams,I could congratulate you for having a new user! ;-)

Now it is the time to dive into more details about creating users and check out the files that affect creating user and the files that automatically set the attributes of the users!

NOTE: in point I am going to show you the important files and write a hit about it.

-/usr/lib/security/mkuser.default

This file defines the basics defaults like group membership, home directory and shell.

 

-/usr/lib/security/mkuser.sys

sets attributes of user home directory and the contents of its startup script (~/.profile in the case of ksh/sh)

-/etc/security/limits

sets the limits on the amount of various system resources user is allowed to use.

For example, here you set the maximum size of user created files (fsize), CPU (cpu), number of files (nofiles) or the core size (core).

The value of “-1” indicated the “unlimited”.

Check the following screen-shot to get a clue and an idea about the system resources including in this file:

 

-cat /etc/security/passwd

This file contains Password details, like the password itself, the time of its last change, need to change it at the next login, etc

-/etc/security/user

Ummm I am really confused what should I write about this very important and rich-info files!

Literally, it is FULL of attributes that define the characteristic of a user (or the whole users).

For instance it defines The minimum number of weeks between password changes,The maximum age of password in weeks and The minimum length of a password.


Hope you enjoyed this blog! :)