General Linux: Copying one user to another

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: General Linux: Copying one user to another
started by: john.martzouco

Posted by john.martzouco on Nov. 27 2007,12:30

Hi All,

I'm new(ish) to Linux/Unix and this is a question coming from that perspective. I'm an old-hat on Windows, so conceptually, I understand operating systems and configurations.

If I wanted to use the profile of one user as a template for a new user in Linux, would it be safe for me to copy everything I find in /home/olduser ==> /home/newuser? Where olduser is a user that has been set up (with Vesa, Firefox homepage, fonts, OS WM etc) and newuser is a newly added user with minimal config done.

Can this be done under DSL or are there user-specific files saved in places other than the home directories?

Much thanks,
John

Posted by mikshaw on Nov. 27 2007,15:48

There should be no user-specific files, other than tempfiles, created outside /home/username, so copying that directory will be sufficient for getting a similar profile.

You will need to change owner of all those files, though. If your new user is "john", do chown -R john /home/john

There may also be files in there, such as the firefox cache, that you may not want to include.

The typical way of modifying new users' profiles, though, is to change the contents of /etc/skel
Changes to this directory will affect any user that is created after the changes, and manually chowning the files is unnecessary.