How to set up Arch Linux on a Raspberry Pi. Part 2: User Accounts

This article is following the suggestions from r3v0luti0n. These are steps that are not fully described on that page though. Further information comes from the Arch Linux Beginner's Guide.

In the following the root shell will be denoted by #, while the user shell uses $.

Setting Up User Accounts

Set up a root password

Keeping the password "root" for the root account is rather dangerous. The command

  # passwd

will allow you to change the password for the root account. You will be asked to enter the password twice. If you want to change it later, use

  $ su -c passwd

The command su -c will grant you superuser privileges for a single command (-c) after you entered the current root password, and the passwd command will be executed afterwards.

Set up a normal user account

The use of the root account for daily work is strongly discouraged. A standard user can be set up using

  # useradd -m -g users -s /bin/bash yournamehere

The -m option creates a home directory for the new user, and the -g option allows you to set the groupid of the new user (users in this case). The -s parameter sets the login shell (/bin/bash) but can be omitted in order to use the default shell. Yournamehere is the name of the new account. The password can be changed later using

  $ su -c passwd

from the user shell. 

Remove a user account

Normal user accounts can be removed by

  # usderdel -r user

The option -r will delete the home directory, and user defines the username which is to be removed.