Its my first time using adduser

Its my first time using adduser, could some one help me through the steps. for e.g. I am at Uid (Leave empty for default): what is this part, should I just leave it as default? I need to be able to su to root when im logged in. my mate (who is away and configed this FreeBSD box of mine (my forst ever non windows os and lovin' it btw)) so he added a user account for me "jay" but he hasnt done what ever you are supose to do to let that user su to root. When ever I type su it just says sorry. grrrr!!! lol. Anyway could somebody help me through the steps, i dont wanna stuff this up. thank you in advance SCwish

I went out on a limb, and just hit enter, where its asking me "Uid (Leave empty for default): now it asks "login group [jay2]:" is this where I type wheel? umm, Ive gone a little further, i reckon I'm stuffing this up, Ive now typed wheel for both the previous and "Invite jay2 into other groups? []:" then
"Login Class [default]:
Shell (sh csh tcsh bash no login) [sh]:
I have no idea what comes next, the guides Ive found are (like I said earlier) guides, they don't tell me like the diff between sh csh tcsh bash and no login, so I dunno which one to use, I so wanna learn this stuff, look i don't wanna free ride, can some one just recommend a really detailed tutorial, that they themselves have read and found to be very good?!?!? Please Thank you

This is what I do.
adduser
Enter the login ID
Enter the real user name
Leave the UID as is (just hit enter)
Leave the login group as is (just hit enter)
Invite jay2 to other groups: this is where you enter wheel
Login class: (just hit enter)
Shell (sh csh tcsh bash nologin) [sh]: (I would go with either tcsh or bash here, they are better than the others. Don't use nologin, otherwise you won't be able to login ).
Enter password: (type in something here)
Reenter password: (type whatever you did in the other line)
(Keep hitting enter for the rest of the questions)
Add another user: (type n here)

By the way, since you have root on this box (you couldn't run adduser otherwise), this is how you add your original account to the wheel group.

I presume you know that there is an editor called vi. This is how to add jay to the wheel group manually.

1. Log in as root
2. vi /etc/group
3. First line should look something like this:

You just need to add yourself to the end of this line.
4. Type <esc>A to put yourself in append mode. (<esc> means, push the Esc key). Note the A instead of a.
5. Type: ,jay and the line should now look like this:

6. Type: <esc>:wq to save the file and exit vi (That's escape key colon w q)

NOTE: If you've made a mistake typing somewhere, simply type <esc>:q! (escape colon q !) to exit without saving. This will not write your file for you.

That's all there is to adding a user to the wheel group.

man, that's awse, when you put it like, that I even feel a little silly. In another Forum, well he didn't so much explain diffs, but i have figured from what he said the sh csh tsch and bash and that are all got different features?!?!? so one is perhaps better than the others. My question is: will that affect what has already been done on the system. I mean my best mate set this box up, and he would have added the user "segra" and i know he logs in via ssh and does super-user things. I cannot find his name anywhere not even in the etc/groups, i wonder where his account would be. Anyway, how would I tell what he has been using for shell, there is files on here call .cshrc (contains aliases and that in the root folder) i got root Axe)) I own the box)) does that mean that segra has used "csh" instead of sh, or tsch. on the other hand there is a little things comes up a lot that says "Nice Tsch!!" wtf lol does that mean anything in the way of sh, csh, tcsh, and bash? Coz if possible i would like to continue in a similar uniformity on this system to the way segra has set it up. Thanks so much again Scorpions4ever, your a dead set Legend

I'll try to answer your posts:
Regarding sh csh tcsh and bash: These are all command shells. Basically, this is the program that produces the $ prompt when you log in and accepts the commands that you type in. Which one is the best is the subject of many holy wars. Each shell has some different features that make it preferred by certain people. For instance, tcsh and bash support using up arrow and down arrow to move up and down through the previous commands typed. They also support auto-completion (i.e. you can type the first few characters and press tab and the shell will guess what you're trying to type). The main differences become prominent when you're trying to write shell scripts because each shell has a slightly different language syntax. sh and csh are older shells and don't pack as many features as tcsh or bash. However, you can pretty much guarantee that sh is installed on just about any UNIX-like system. On most Linux systems, sh and bash are installed by default. On FreeBSD, tcsh is installed by default along with csh and sh (you need to install bash separately). OpenBSD installs sh, csh and ksh. On Linux systems, I use bash as my shell, since it runs rings around sh. On FreeBSD, I use tcsh because I'm usually too lazy to go and install bash separately. If I do find bash previously installed though, I prefer bash over tcsh. On OpenBSD, I prefer to use ksh, for the same reason that I'm too lazy to install tcsh or bash afterwards. Besides ksh and bash are pretty similar as far as I'm concerned.


Seeing the user names: type cat /etc/passwd to see the list of users. This file is a copy of the password file (not the original), but you can see a list of usernames on the system. Your friend's login (segra) should show up here. On *nix systems, you have the concept of logins and groups. Each login can belong to multiple groups and you can assign different permissions to each group. That way you can control what each login can do by assigning it to certain groups.