Please help! problems with user accounts

[l0vern0hater]

im very new to linux so i got puppy linux, and i dont want to be logged on as root all the time because i heard it was bad. so i created another user with the adduser command in rxvt. looked something like this:

adduser -h /root/user -s bin/bash user

user being the new user account i created

and i can log into that account with:

su - user

and it logs in, and displays #, but i thought the # was supposed to change to $ meaning i didnt have all the powers of root. so how do i set up my accounts to have limited access so if im playing around in the command line, it doesnt mess up anything really important? also im pretty new to having to use the command line to do anything, so any help there would be much appriciated as well.

[Lazydog]

I don't know puppy linux but use 'man adduser' to get the proper commend settings. It looks like you added the new user under /root/ , I'm guessing that is what '-h' does, and that is not where it should be. Normal users are under /home/.

[spaceminer143]

If I'm correct, there are two commands, adduser and useradd, which perform the same task, but one of them presents helpful prompts. Don't know if that's true for Puppy, though.

[l0vern0hater]

I don't know puppy linux but use 'man adduser' to get the proper commend settings. It looks like you added the new user under /root/ , I'm guessing that is what '-h' does, and that is not where it should be. Normal users are under /home/.

but when i do adduser and make the path to /home/user it adds the user but says that it wasnt created when i try to log into it and when i look for the dir its not there.

[sholdowa]

useradd -m <username> will create the new directory structure as /home/<username> in puppy, IIRC ( it's been a long time ).

You then need to set a password:

passwd <username>

And you should then be able to log in as your new user...

[l0vern0hater]

thanks guys for pushin me in the right direction, i figured it out, i just needed to put -h (which makes the home dir) and put the whole path, ie:

adduser -h /mnt/home/user user

quite simple cant beleive i didnt think of it sooner lol.