Add system user to CentOS 6

I need help adding a system user to my CentOS server. I have two commands that works on Ubuntu Server, however I have to find a replacement for CentOS while keeping the same result. The commands are:

sudo adduser --system --shell /bin/sh --gecos 'Git Version Control' --group --disabled-password --home /home/git git
sudo adduser --disabled-login --gecos 'GitLab' gitlab

The options that I can't find on CentOS are --system, --disabled-password and --disabled-login.


You want to take a look at man useradd. You seem to have a good grasp of what you want to do but adduser = useradd in RHEL/CentOS.

  • -r = --system
  • For the other options, I think you just want to lock the account with passwd -l <username> after the account is created.

Make sure empty passwords are not allowed by PAM;

Look in /etc/pam.d/system-auth and /etc/pam.d/password-auth and remove nullok from the pam_unix.so lines (if applicable.)

Ubuntu's adduser
& useradd