Script that would automate adding users
 

Create a script that would automate adding users. The script SHOULD NOT use the functionality "useradd" that comes with the system, to create users. Each user should be added manually
Creating the password should also be incorporated in the script. That means, when you call the script to create a user, you also give it the password value, and then, your script will create the user and also create the password without prompting you for anything.

Ex:

Assume the name of your script is create_users . Then the following command:

./create_users smith 1001 120 initpassvalue "Alex Smith" /home/smith /bin/bash

./create_users username uid gid initial_password user_information home_directory default_shell

will create a user named smith, with UID 101, add to primary group 120, home directory /home/smith, information about the account being "Alex Smith", with the bash shell as the default login shell and with the initial password set to initpassvalue. A .profile file and a .login file should automatically be copied into the home directory, every time a user is created.

The system will incorporate the shadow password file. The password should automatically have the default values for the following:

passwd length should be at least 8 characters

The password should be valid for 3 months


Can anyone provide any clues or hints for me? thanks in advance!

Dave

are you asking us to do your homework ?? that is what it looks like ??

Sounds like a test question, or well, they said no "useradd", try to acuire a source for useradd, it might help, I think it uses echo redirected directly to a shadow password file, let me see in Linux Journal, they had a similar thingy, but the user had no password and ability to gain root privileges.

I'm a jr. admin in our UNIX group and the Sr. guy is having a few of us come up with this by friday. winner gets a free lunch from him. :)

In linux journal they have two echo commands
I know what these numbers are, but I am not telling you, because I am hungry (kidding), try to find out yourself. What it does it creates the user with username eviluser with uid and gid set to 0, and there's no encrypted password which goes to /etc/shadow, so if it's done as root, now any user can gain root access just typing
/bin/su - eviluser
Good luck on this one, so as for encryption I think pam utils package is the solution, so keep on reading man pages and you'll get your launch.