how can I use crontab to add a user?
currently I'm calling a perl script which reads the username from mysql...and does a useradd $username...but it's not working any thoughts?...suggestions?

that should work fine. but you've not told us in what way it's not working, so we can't help you fix what you're currently doing.

may i ask why you want to continually add a user with crontab? A perl loop wouldn't work? Can you post your perl?

i would assume a number of users are subbmitted during the day and added in bulk after moderation or suchlike.

well...it's just a simple perl script.... I'm not that good at perl so some of you might laugh..but here it goes...this script adds users fine when I run it from command line..but not from crontab...

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use DBI;
use Data:umper;

########################
# connect to db #
########################
my $db = "db";
my $dbuser= "user";
my $dbpassword = "";
my $hostname = "localhost";
my $dbh = DBI->connect("DBI:mysql:$db:$hostname", $dbuser, $dbpassword);
#lets read the db to see if there's stuff in it
my @arr;
my $query = "select * from user_to_add";
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($query);
$sth->execute();
while(my $hash = $sth->fetchrow_hashref()){
my $x = `userdd $$hash{'username'}`;
push(@arr, $$hash{'username'});
}
$sth->finish();
foreach my $name (@arr){
my $query2 = "delete from user_to_add where username = '$name'";
my $sth2 = $dbh->prepare($query2);
$sth2->execute();
$sth2->finish();
}
$dbh->disconnect();
close(FILE);

My question would be, what does your crontab look like? If the script works fine by manually running it, it's not your script.

So it's a problem with either your entry to crontab or crond isn't running, unless you have other cron jobs running without problems.

* * * * /var/www/cgi-bin/lib/user_to_add.pl[/email]
* * * * * sleep 30; /var/www/cgi-bin/lib/user_to_add.pl

cause I want this crontab to run every 30 seconds.... and I checked it does execute the script..I printed some crap to STDERR...

You have the same script running twice from what it appears, one every second, the other every 30 seconds with your sleep 30 command. You know, you could just make cron run it every 30 seconds

And I guess I don't understand why you would have this run twice from cron, one missing the day of week..

k I fixed my cront(thanks a lot)...now why does it not create the user ?

I don't know, is there any errors output to your logs? Do any other cronjobs run without any problems? Is crond even running?

no there isn't any other errors in the log...and the crond's running too...is there a restriction that cron cannot create a user or something?....maybe not right permission or args?

figured out the problem...I needed to say /usr/sbin/useradd in my perl script...thankx a lot for your time

Heh, always use the full path for commands in scripts.