NEWUSERS(8)

NAME
newusers - update and create new users in batch

SYNOPSIS

newusers [new_users]

DESCRIPTION

newusers reads a file of user name and clear-text password pairs and uses this information to update a group of existing users or to create new users. Each line is in the same format as the standard password file (see passwd(5)) with the following exceptions:

pw_passwd
    This field will be encrypted and used as the new value of the encrypted password.

pw_age
    This field will be ignored for shadow passwords if the user already exists.

pw_gid
    This field may be the name of an existing group, in which case the named user will be added as a member. If a non-existent numerical group is given, a new group will be created having this number.

pw_dir
    This field will be checked for existence as a directory and a new directory with the same name will be created if it does not already exist. The ownership of the directory will be set to be that of the user being created or updated. Note that newusers does not create parent directories of the new user's home directory. The newusers command will fail to create the home directory if the parent directories do not exist, and will send a message to stderr informing the user of the failure. The newusers command will not halt or return a failure to the calling shell if it fails to create the home directory, it will continue to process the batch of new users specified.

This command is intended to be used in a large system environment where many accounts are updated at a single time.

CAVEATS

The input file must be protected since it contains unencrypted passwords.

FILES

/etc/login.defs
    Shadow password suite configuration.

SEE ALSO

login.defs(5), passwd(1), useradd(8).