how is it possible that the useradd command is not found although a man entry exists?

austrianadmin

luisviveropena

Hi @austrianadmin,

1.- What Debian version are you running?
2.- On Debian it seems that 'useradd' is provided by the passwd tool. So the documentation should be provided by the same package. You can check on it as follows:

dpkg -L passwd

3.- Can you try using 'adduser' instead? Perhaps something related to sudo and/or the PATH variable isn't working as expected.

4.- You also can do this in order to find the tool:

which useradd
/usr/sbin/useradd

sudo find /usr/sbin/ -name useradd
/usr/sbin/useradd

(Or look for it on / using sudo).

But that's Ubuntu.

Regards,
Luis.

luisviveropena

Hi Berni,

I did a test on Debian 13.2 and both tools -adduser and useradd- worked:

luis@debiansrv:~$ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="13"
VERSION="13 (trixie)"
VERSION_CODENAME=trixie
DEBIAN_VERSION_FULL=13.2
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

luis@debiansrv:~$ sudo adduser user1
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: password updated successfully
Changing the user information for user1
Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default
Full Name []:
Room Number []:
Work Phone []:
Home Phone []:
Other []:
Is the information correct? [Y/n] Y

luis@debiansrv:~$ id user1
uid=1001(user1) gid=1001(user1) groups=1001(user1),100(users)

luis@debiansrv:~$ sudo useradd user2
luis@debiansrv:~$ id user2
uid=1002(user2) gid=1002(user2) groups=1002(user2)

So, please try on Debian 13, as some issues related to Debian 12 could be playing a role here (you also can Google for 'debian 12 adduser won't run').

Regards,
Luis.

austrianadmin

Hi Luis,
It is Debian 12, i tried adduser instead...my PATH Variable: echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games:/snap/bin
....is it the PATH?.....when i type which useradd....no reaction...then i tried...sudo find /usr/sbin/-name useradd
[sudo] password for newuser1:
find: ‘/usr/sbin/-name’: No such file or directory
find: ‘useradd’: No such file or directory
....i would love to solve that issue..thanks for your help

best berni