Step 5 — Create Your Own Account

Why it matters: root can do anything instantly and without confirmation, including destroying the system with a typo. A normal account has to ask for administrator powers with sudo, which gives you a half-second to notice you are about to do something serious.

Every experienced person works this way.

Create it

Replace yourname with the username you want — lowercase, no spaces:

adduser yourname
usermod -aG sudo yourname

Set a real password and save it in your password manager. You will not use it to log in, but you will need it when you run sudo.

Install your key for that account

mkdir -p /home/yourname/.ssh
cp /root/.ssh/authorized_keys /home/yourname/.ssh/
chown -R yourname:yourname /home/yourname/.ssh
chmod 700 /home/yourname/.ssh
chmod 600 /home/yourname/.ssh/authorized_keys

Now test it — this is the step that prevents disaster

Keep your root window open

Leave your current window open and connected as root. Open a second terminal window and connect as your new user:

ssh yourname@203.0.113.10

If that works, continue. If it does not, stop and fix it — you still have the root window open, which is your safety net.

The next step removes that safety net permanently.

Next

Lock the Front Door