Add a new user account in Raspbian Raspberry Pi

For my cluster project I will add a new user to each Raspberry Pi. This is so the user I use for all other systems will be the  same on the Raspberry Pi’s. This post describes how to add another user to Raspbian OS.

Adding a new user to Raspbian OS

To add a user to your Raspberry Pi running Raspbian OS you can run the following command. You should replace chewett with your desired username.

sudo adduser chewett

Once this has been run you will be presented with a number of dialogue options. The most important one is asking for your password. The other information can be useful where there are a number of users on a system however for a Raspberry Pi this likely isn’t too important.

pi@bunker-speedtest:~$ sudo adduser chewett
 Adding user `chewett' ...
 Adding new group `chewett' (1001) ...
 Adding new user `chewett' (1001) with group `chewett' ...
 Creating home directory `/home/chewett' ...
 Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
 Enter new UNIX password:
 Retype new UNIX password:
 passwd: password updated successfully
 Changing the user information for chewett
 Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
 Full Name []: chewett
 Room Number []:
 Work Phone []:
 Home Phone []:
 Other []:
 Is the information correct? [Y/n] y

Once you have confirmed all this information the user will be created. At this point you might want to add the user to any groups you have created. If you want to want to use the vcgencmd command to read temperature or other system information you will need to add them to the video group.