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Sepero
Asked: 2014-08-07 07:58:44 +0800 CST

Change default groups assigned to new users

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When a new user is created, they are assigned to a set of default groups. How do I change which default groups are assigned?

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2 Answers

  1. That can change according to the way you are creating the new user.

    If you are using useradd you can either specify the -G option or use that dirty (very dirty) workaround : rewriting a useradd script.

    There is maybe a possibility to specify multiple default groups in /etc/default/useradd but I could not find anything in the man or online in the couple of minutes of research I did. So if you really need to do it you can :

    mv /usr/bin/useradd /usr/bin/useradd.default

    and now recreate /usr/bin/useradd with the following content

    #!/bin/bash 

useradd.default -G somegroup,otheradditionnalgroup "$@"

    Now make this executable chmod +x /usr/bin/useradd

    And you should be ready to go.

    It may happen that the useradd command is not located in /usr/bin . You can find it using whereis useradd

    Once again, this is a dirty hack that will be overwritten by an update. Be careful when doing something like this.

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  2. Assuming you are using the adduser command to add new users:

    Open /etc/adduser.conf in your text editor of choice and scroll down until you see #EXTRA_GROUPS.

    Uncomment this and the #ADD_EXTRA_GROUPS line beneath it.

    Set the value of EXTRA_GROUPS to whatever you would like the groups to be for new users aside from their own named group.

    Save and start creating new users.

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