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Author: Ricky Bryce (Montgomery County, Illinois)

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Adding Users


Now we must add users who are going to utilize this server because we don't want to always be using the root account. You will want the users to have a strong password consisting of numbers and letters, upper case and lower case. For example, if you have a username of john, and the password is simply set to 'password', someone can easily gain access to that account (and probably eventually will!)


  1. I'm going to assume you are logged in through PUTTY using the root account.


  1. Adding users to your machine can be accomplished with the adduser command. Type the following (substitute 'username' for the name of the user you are adding).
    Type adduser username
     Later, if you want to delete a user, you can do this through the userdel command


  1. Now, we need to set the password for the user you just added.
    Type: passwd username (again where username is the name of the user you are changing the password for.

    .

  2. Now, you can type exit, and log back into your VPS using a username and password that you created for yourself. This is going to be more secure because you are not always running as the root user. Once you log into your standard user account, you can use the su command to become the super user (root) at any time



  1. Type exit to leave the terminal window.


  1. Write down the username and password of the standard user you just created!!!


Username______________________

Password_______________________