Jono's technical notes

The following will create a user USER_NAME in the group USER_NAME
with a home directory /Users/USER_NAME, it assumes you have sudo
access and are currently in /Users

1. Find the next free uid by running the following

   nireport . /users name uid

2. create user, assuming a free uid of 505 from the previous step.

   This should be a single line.
   

   echo USER_NAME::505:505:USER_NAME build user:0:0:USER_NAME
User:/Users/USER_NAME:/bin/bash | sudo niload -v passwd /
   

3. Set password

   sudo passwd USER_NAME
   

4. create group

   echo 'USER_NAME:*:505: USER_NAME' | sudo niload -v group /

5. create user directory

   mkdir USER_NAME
   

6. change ownership

   sudo chown USER_NAME:USER_NAME USER_NAME
   

7. make sure you can login

   ssh USER_NAME@localhost
   

As an aside here is how to delete a user via the command line.

1. check the user exists

   dscl . read /users/USER_NAME
   

2. delete the users group

   sudo dscl . delete /groups/USER_NAME
   

3. delete the user

   sudo dscl . delete /users/USER_NAME
   

4. delete user home directory

   sudo rm -rf USER_NAME
   

Taken from

• http://www.mcelhearn.com/article.php?story=2004110211244242
  

• http://mikesalsbury.com/mambo/content/view/130/2/

• http://www.oreillynet.com/mac/blog/2006/04/deleting_mac_os_x_users_remote.html

• http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/index.html

• http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=60038
  

Labels: OSX create user