Linux (ubuntu/bash) script to add users manually

[aurrorax]

Dear,

I am currently in my graduation year of my IT networking school, and now one teacher has decided to give us some lessons in linux, no harm right?

I am going trough the course with ease but now he has asked us to make a script to add users manually into the passwd and shadow file from a csv / txt file with a script, unfortunately we were not allowed to use the adduser or useradd command which has left me completely clueless on how to do it.

 

Does anyone have any tips or an example script?

 

Thanks for your help!

[Jade]

How about something like this?

[aurrorax]

5 minutes ago, Jade said:

How about something like this?

Could you give me an example? I don't understand how it is done.

[unijab]

Do you even know bash yet?

Have a look into sed and awk that might help some

[aurrorax]

4 minutes ago, unijab said:

Do you even know bash yet?

Have a look into sed and awk that might help some

The assignment states it has to be done in bash, don't ask me why, it just has to.. , Thanks for the suggestion anyway

[Jade]

4 minutes ago, aurrorax said:

Could you give me an example? I don't understand how it is done.

The first link I gave was probably less than useful; didn't realize it using newusers. My bad, on that. These should hopefully be more of use. That said, if you're allowed to use the newusers command, it does most of the work for you... you could create a bash script that takes an argument (file of users + passwords) and just passes it to the newusers command. 

https://askubuntu.com/a/292573

https://www.howtoforge.com/user_password_creating_with_a_bash_script

[aurrorax]

1 minute ago, Jade said:

The first link I gave was probably less than useful; didn't realize it using newusers. My bad, on that. These should hopefully be more of use. That said, if you're allowed to use the newusers command, it does most of the work for you... you could create a bash script that takes an argument (file of users + passwords) and just passes it to the newusers command. 

https://askubuntu.com/a/292573

https://www.howtoforge.com/user_password_creating_with_a_bash_script

I have found this aswel, unfortunately I am not allowed to use adduser or useradd , newusers is allowed.

[Jade]

18 minutes ago, aurrorax said:

I have found this aswel, unfortunately I am not allowed to use adduser or useradd , newusers is allowed.

Should be easy enough, then. Here's the manpage for newusers -- not gonna do all your work. ;)

This code is untested and I can't be held liable for it, all that legal stuffs.

How to run the script:

./myUserScript thisListOfImportedUsers

What's in the script, theoretically. $1 is variable 1 (argument -- thisListOfImportedUsers)

#!/bin/bash

newusers $1

What's in thisListOfImportedUsers - formatted as 

<Username>:<Password>:<UID>:<GID>:<User Info>:<Home Dir>:<Default Shell>

tester1:tester1!:6001:6011:testaccount:/home/tester1:/bin/bash
tester2:tester2!:6002:6012:testaccount:/home/tester2:/bin/bash
tester3:tester3!:6003:6013:testaccount:/home/tester3:/bin/bash

[aurrorax]

On 31-1-2016 at 0:55 AM, Jade said:

Should be easy enough, then. Here's the manpage for newusers -- not gonna do all your work.

This code is untested and I can't be held liable for it, all that legal stuffs.

How to run the script:

./myUserScript thisListOfImportedUsers

What's in the script, theoretically. $1 is variable 1 (argument -- thisListOfImportedUsers)

#!/bin/bash

newusers $1

What's in thisListOfImportedUsers - formatted as 

<Username>:<Password>:<UID>:<GID>:<User Info>:<Home Dir>:<Default Shell>

tester1:tester1!:6001:6011:testaccount:/home/tester1:/bin/bash
tester2:tester2!:6002:6012:testaccount:/home/tester2:/bin/bash
tester3:tester3!:6003:6013:testaccount:/home/tester3:/bin/bash

Thank you for this, this has helped me alot unfortunately there seems to be a bug present in ubuntu at the moment that prevens adding more than 2 users at once, trying mint as we speak.

 

source : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/shadow/+bug/1266675

             http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.alioth.pkg-shadow/3327

 

[Jade]

55 minutes ago, aurrorax said:

Thank you for this, this has helped me alot unfortunately there seems to be a bug present in ubuntu at the moment that prevens adding more than 2 users at once, trying mint as we speak.

 

source : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/shadow/+bug/1266675

             http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.alioth.pkg-shadow/3327

 

I would've caught that if I had tested the stuff I gave you -- my bad on that. Your best bet is a different distro (Cent, perhaps?)  entirely, 'cause Mint is based on Ubuntu. 

[Guest]

It's 2016, let's use configuration management systems for this kind of thing, instead of writing brittle shell scripts.

• Puppet
• Salt
• Chef
• Ansible

And so on. Oh, but it's for a class. Bummer!

[unijab]

6 hours ago, SSL said:

It's 2016, let's use configuration management systems for this kind of thing, instead of writing brittle shell scripts.

• Puppet
• Salt
• Chef
• Ansible

And so on. Oh, but it's for a class. Bummer!

know where I can find in depth tutorials on puppet?

[Guest]

23 minutes ago, unijab said:

know where I can find in depth tutorials on puppet?

http://garylarizza.com/

https://docs.puppetlabs.com/pe/latest/quick_start.html

http://docs.puppetlabs.com/puppet/latest/reference/

 

Puppet docs are actually a pretty good place to start. Just remember that Puppet is a declarative, domain specific language; it's not procedural and doesn't have control flow. It enforces state, not behavior.

[aurrorax]

On 2/3/2016 at 5:29 PM, Jade said:

I would've caught that if I had tested the stuff I gave you -- my bad on that. Your best bet is a different distro (Cent, perhaps?)  entirely, 'cause Mint is based on Ubuntu. 

Sorry for the delayed response!

Mint did actually work, thanks for your help.

I am still awaiting approval from my teacher I'll let you know