Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell

Creating a User with dscl

To create a user with dscl, you’ll need to create a directory under /users, and set the uid, gid, shell, realname, and home properties.

The following commands will create the same user shown in the previous section:

    $ sudo dscl . create /users/rothman uid 701
    $ sudo dscl . create /users/rothman gid 701
    $ sudo dscl . create /users/rothman shell /bin/bash
    $ sudo dscl . create /users/rothman home /Users/rothman
    $ sudo dscl . create /users/rothman realname "Ernest Rothman"
    $ sudo dscl . create /users/rothman passwd \*
    $ sudo dscl . create /groups/rothman gid 701
    $ sudo dscl . create /groups/rothman passwd \*

Be sure to quote or escape the asterisk (*) in the passwd entries. After you create the user, you should set the password as shown in the previous section.