I’m setting up a new Linode box for a client. (Speaking of Linode, it’s freaking awesome and you should sign up. If you do, use this link to give me some bonus credit).

For the Linux distro I chose Ubuntu 10.4 (32-bit). This is just the one I know the best.

One of the first things I like to do is set up a personal user account so that I don’t use the root. This is so less-than-intuitive I have to look it up every time.

Here are my notes so that I don’t forget.

As root, run the useradd command:

sudo useradd -d /home/testuser -m -s /bin/bash testuser

Reset their password:

sudo passwd testuser

Then add them to the sudoers file:

visudo

Create a user alias for the company accounts:

User_Alias CHAIONE = user1, user2

Then add this line lower down:

CHAIONE ALL=ALL

For future users, just add them to the CHAIONE alias