Mastering Linux Security and Hardening

Using usermod to add an existing user to a group

The good news is that this works the same on either Red Hat or CentOS or Debian/Ubuntu: 

[donnie@localhost ~]$ sudo usermod -a -G marketing maggie[sudo] password for donnie:[donnie@localhost ~]$ groups maggiemaggie : maggie marketing[donnie@localhost ~]$

In this case, the -a wasn't necessary, because Maggie wasn't a member of any other secondary group. But, if she had already belonged to another group, the -a would have been necessary to keep from overwriting any existing group information, thus removing her from the previous groups.

This method is especially handy for use on Ubuntu systems, where it was necessary to use adduser in order to create encrypted home directories. (As we saw in a ...