Adding Users

As stated in my first blog post, I was tasked in my system administration course with adding users to my machines (Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, and OpenSolaris). The Windows machines themselves were no challenge at all, although OpenSolaris did frighten me a bit when I first booted up the machine. After some quick Googling though, it was quite easy to figure out. Below I will be posting a tutorial for each machine and how to add users to it.

Windows 7

1. Begin by pressing the start button (Windows logo), right click on My Computer and go to Manage.

2. Under Computer Management, expand the System Tools menu. Then expand Local Users and Groups and select the Users folder. You should receive a window similar to this:

3. To add a user, you can go to Action -> “New User…” Alternatively, you can right click in the whitespace below the current list of users and select “New User…”

4. You will be prompted with a dialog box like shown below.

5. Simply enter in the user’s information into the dialog box. Note: be sure you have “User must change password at next logon” unchecked. When you have entered in the required information, click Create.

6. Do this for each user until you are complete. When you have finished, click Close. You should now have local users added to your computer and they should be viewable in the previous window. You have now successfully added users to your Windows 7 machine!

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Windows Server 2008 R2

1. Begin by pressing the start button (Windows logo), right click on My Computer and go to Manage. Alternatively, you can click the Server Manager button on the taskbar (indicated by the red circle).

2. Under Server Manager, expand the Configuration menu. Then expand the Local Users and Groups menu and select the Users folder. You should receive a window similar to this:

3. To add a user, you can go to Action -> “New User…” Alternatively, you can right click in the whitespace below the current list of users and select “New User…”

4. You will be prompted with a dialog box like shown below:

5. Simply enter in the user’s information into the dialog box. Note: be sure you have “User must change password at next logon” unchecked. When you have entered in the required information, click Create.

6. Do this for each user until you are complete. When you have finished, click Close. You should now have local users added to your computer and they should be viewable in the previous window. You have now successfully added users to your Windows Server 2008 R2 machine!

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OpenSolaris

There are two methods of adding users to OpenSolaris: by CLI (command line interface) and by GUI (graphical user interface). In this guide, I will be showing you how to add users via CLI. Note: you must have administrative or root privileges through this method.

1. Begin by opening a terminal, either by going to Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal, or you may click the Terminal icon located on the top taskbar (circled in red).

2. You should have a terminal window opened like this:

3. Once you have opened a terminal, you must elevate your privileges to root to add users. To do this, you enter in the command “su”. The terminal will prompt you for root’s password. After successfully elevating your privileges, you will notice your terminal will change from ~$ to ~#, showing that you have successfully logged in as root.

4. 

To add a user, we use the “useradd” command. In the terminal, type the following command:

useradd –d /export/home/username –m username

Replace “username” with the desired username you wish to add (in this example, I used “diggums”). You may have noticed we used a few parameters with this command. The “-d dir” parameter specifies the home directory of the new user, and the “-m” parameter will create the new user’s home directory if it does not already exist.

For more information on the useradd command, see “man useradd”.

”.

5. After you have successfully added the user, we must set their password. We do this through the “passwd” command. With your privileges still elevated to root, execute the “passwd” command followed by the username you wish to set the password for. After you execute the command, you will be asked for a new password and a re-entry to confirm the correct password. If you enter in the new password correctly both times, you will get a message saying “passwd: password successfully changed for <username>”.

6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until you have added all the users you wish to add. When you are completed, simply type “exit” to log out of the terminal as root and back to your local user account.

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This may not have been the most difficult task to begin the semester with, but I'm excited to see what I can be put to the test to accomplish by the end of this semester!