Here are the steps required to create a user in the terminal on a Mac OS X machine. First you need to know the current users, and their user IDs. Open the terminal and type:
nireport / /users name uid | grep "5[0123456789][0123456789]"This should report all users that are in the 500+ range for the user ID. User accounts generally start at 501, and work up, so look at the list returned, and pick the next available number to assign to the new user you are creating. You will use it in place of the uid 555 below.
sudo niutil -create / /users/ftpuser sudo niutil -createprop / /users/ftpuser uid 555 sudo niutil -createprop / /users/ftpuser realname "FTP User" sudo niutil -createprop / /users/ftpuser home "/Users/ftpuser" sudo niutil -createprop / /users/ftpuser shell "/dev/null" sudo niutil -createprop / /users/ftpuser gid 20 sudo niutil -createprop / /users/ftpuser passwd "*" sudo passwd ftpuserThen you will be prompted to enter the password you want to create for the new user. Optionally you can skip this step, and the account is created, but logins are disabled until the password has a value assigned.
sudo cp -R /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj /Users/ftpuser sudo chown -R ftpuser:staff /Users/ftpuserThis is basically what happens when you use the Accounts Preference Pane to create an account. Optionally you could SSH to another machine and create accounts.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030603190314390