Ok, I can explicitely specify a home directory and assign a shell when I create a new user "karl" with e.g. useradd -d /export/home/karl -m -g other -s /usr/bin/bash karl But what if I omit the -d and -s parameters? Which home directory and which shell is assigned by default ? How can I find it out without trying it out and look into the /etc/passwd Is there a command to ask for the default ? Matthew