How to recreate user1

[Joshua Goi]

Hi,

I have accidentally removed my user1. Is there any way to recreate that user account with it's original UID?

Thanks!

[Stephen Keane]

If you know what the original UID was, then run SAM and change the UID it puts up to the one you want.

[Pete Randall]

Joshua,

If you know what the original UID was (hint: you can check their home directory with "ll"), you can just recreate the user (I assume you must be using SAM), then edit /etc/passwd and change the UID to match.


Pete

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

Yes, simply add the user again either in SAM or via the useradd command. If SAM does not allow you to override the UID then simply add the user; accept whatever UID it assigns; and then usermod -u olduid user1 to assign the original UID. Man usermod for details.

[Joshua Goi]

It doesn't work. The orginal UID is apparently reserved even though it no longer tied to any account.

[Joshua Goi]

Ooops my last reply is for Stephen Keane.

[Stephen Keane]

Worth a try though. I'd go with the vineheads' suggestions.

[Bill Hassell]

Did you simply remove the entry in /etc/passwd? If the files in the user's old HOME directory are still there, use ll to list the contents. Since the user was removed, the owner will now be a number (ll uses the passwd file to translate UID into a username). Then simply add a line with the password information. A quick way is to duplicate the last line, then change the last line to user1, the user1 UID, home directory, etc. If this is a Trusted system, you'll need to use SAM.

If you used SAM to remove user1 and you said to remove all the files in the home directory, you'll need to restore the files after recreating user1.

[Joshua Goi]

Clay's solution works! Thanks guys!