How To: UNIX Add A User To A Group

by nixCraft on June 16, 2008 · 21 comments· last updated at June 16, 2008

Q. How do I add a user to a group under Sun Solaris UNIX operating system from a shell prompt or command line?

A.. You can useadd command to administer a new user login on the UNIX system. Solaris UNIX / HP-UX UNIX uses /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow and /etc/group files to store user information.

Following information is compatible with the Solaris, AIX and HP-UX UNIX operating systems.

Add A New User To A Group

Add a new user called vivek to a group called vsftp, enter:
# useradd -G vsftp -d /data/home/v/vivek -m vivek # passwd vivek
Where,

-G vsftp : Add vivek to secondary group called vsftp. This group must exists on the system.
-d /data/home/v/vivek : Path to the vivek's home directory
-m : Create the new user's home directory if it does not already exist.
vivek : Username / login nane

UNIX Add Existing User To A Secondary Group

Use usermod command to modify a user's login definition on the system including group membership. For, example add user vivek to sales group, enter:
# usermod -G sales vivek
Add user tom to sales but also keep his existing membership of ftpusers, enter:
# usermod -G ftpusers,sales tom

UNIX Add Existing User To A Primary Group

Add jerry to sales primary group and change its existing group membership:
# usermod -g sales jerry
For more information read following man pages:
$ man usermod $ man useradd $ man passwd

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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Mihir G joshi June 18, 2008 at 12:37 pm

Hello Vivek,

I don’t want my private files to be displayed in the output of find command????

2 Mihir G joshi June 18, 2008 at 12:39 pm

How do i hide my confidential files to be isolated from find output??

I am using RHEL 5

Mihir G joshi

3 Jonathan Dade January 10, 2009 at 10:03 am

Find is a command that is used to list all files that it “finds”. If you don’t want other people to find them when using find make sure they do not have root access or access to the directory in which the files are stored.

Usually on a multi-user system you would store your files in your home directory. The only users that have access to this directory are yourself, root and in general anyone who is a member of the group named after your username. Be aware that if you create users the hard way (by editting /etc/passwd /etc/shadow /etc/groups) and you create users with the same uid / gid then these will also be able to access because they are the “same” user.

Of course as a RHEL 5 owner you can indeed ask this sort of question of RedHat’s support teams.

I hope this helps.

4 esha June 25, 2009 at 6:32 pm

Hi,
Can someone help. Is it possible to add # infront of user loginname without vi to the password file. I have more than 50 users loginame to hide. Any command?
Thanks

5 Vivek Gite June 25, 2009 at 6:41 pm: I don’t get you, provide more info.
Reply

6 esha June 25, 2009 at 7:00 pm

Vivek,
Example: i have account named esha and i want to add #esha without manually vi to password file.
Any possible way?

7 Vivek Gite June 25, 2009 at 8:50 pm: You wanna lock user account? If so use passwd itself:
passwd -l username
To unlock
passwd -u username
Reply
8 krishna December 22, 2011 at 9:17 am: no its cannot possiable ok
u have to create via useradd command
note: while creating the user , system will automatically created related configuration file ok
Reply

9 esha July 7, 2009 at 2:51 pm

Thanks Vivek. Another one:
What is the SUN command to get directory full path for example for shortcut: $QERP_TOP.

10 william lee August 3, 2009 at 12:46 am

hi
i have a problem…
Can I change the properties of the group?
What I mean is let say i have one admin group , it can edit and install the SW in the system, and at the same time, I have a user group , it can just use the SW but can’t install it. AS long as i add a account to the group, it automatically can have those priveledge according to the group properties.

Thanks

Willaim Lee

11 Samuel October 15, 2009 at 1:58 pm

Hi vivek , first sorry about my english (I’mfrom Brazil) .

My problem is : add an existing user to a group without removing its existing group.
For example:
HP > /usr/sam/lbin/grpusrs -m -l ‘,user’ group
Linux > /usr/sbin/groupmod -A user group
AIX > chgrpmem -m + user group

When I use this one “/usr/local/bin/usermod -G group user” , it removes any other existing group.

Tks for your attention

Samuel

12 Lyenna Amchurek October 29, 2009 at 3:05 am

Hi,
I’m new to HPUX.
Let say I have existing id called Sysadmin which is a normal user. How do I upgrade this id to become root equivalent, and have all the permissions like root.

13 krishna December 22, 2011 at 8:47 am: we cannot change the same id
but chenahe the id for chmod command
it root loogin u have to change the permissions for perticular user
using of chown command
Reply

14 Samuel November 17, 2009 at 12:55 pm

Lyenna

By editing /etc/passwd and changing the ID (second field) to zero.

Bye

15 krishna December 22, 2011 at 8:48 am: using of chmod command only
do n;t chage the in vi mode ok
Reply

16 Asit Pal July 19, 2010 at 9:34 am

drwxr-xr-x 2 asit ae 1024 Jul 8 16:03 00000010

How will I change the name user “asit” to “amit” and group “ae” to “pp” ?
Any unix command?

Thanks
Asit

17 anon January 3, 2011 at 6:42 pm: sed ‘s/asit/amit/g’ /etc/passwd > /etc/passwd.tmp
sed ‘s/ae/pp/g’ /etc/passwd.tmp > /etc/passwd
pwck ( to check for password file errors )
Reply
18 srikanth kumbam February 25, 2011 at 5:03 am: This answer to asit pal, If you want to change your user name from asit to amit, you should execute the follwing command
usermod -l amit asit
for group its almost same groupmod -n pp ae
Reply

19 wasim October 21, 2011 at 6:55 am