How to create number of users and passwords automatically

If you are a network administrator, and need to register a lot of users at once. It takes a lot of time to register one by one. Instead, if you have a list of users, you can register all users at once using an autopasswd command. However, the autopasswd command does not work properly. I checked different version from different distributions, but all of them does not work. It shows errors, so it needs to be modified. I do not know why the useless comannd is widely distributed.

Modify autopasswd

Install expect-5.38.0-88.i386.rpm from Red Hat CD or somewhere else.

# rpm -ihv expect-5.38.0-88.i386.rpm

As I said, autopasswd command included in expect package does not work properly. In such case, you need to add "sleep" command in the middle. Edit /usr/bin/autopasswd as below,

#!/usr/bin/expect -f
# wrapper to make passwd(1) be non-interactive
# username is passed as 1st arg, passwd as 2nd

set password [lindex $argv 1]
spawn passwd [lindex $argv 0]
expect {
        -re "password:" {sleep 1; send "$password\r"; exp_continue}
        -re "password:" {sleep 1; send "$password\r";}
}

Create your own useradd and userdel command

create a custom useradd and userdel command to automate necessary arrangement. It creates a user, set a password, create a personal web page directory and copy a disk quota from a model user.

/root/bin/myuseradd

#!/bin/bash

GROUPID=100

# for disk quota. Apply same value of the disk quota to one group
MODELUSER=quotamodel

useradd $1 -g $GROUPID
autopasswd $1 $2

# to create a personal web page directory
mkdir /home/$1/public_html
chmod 755 /home/$1 -R
chown $1.$GROUP /home/$1 -R

# Set a user quota to one group (group id = 100)
edquota -p $MODELUSER `awk -F: '$3 > 499 && $4==100{print $1}' /etc/passwd`

It deletes a user account and a user home directory.

/root/bin/myuserdel

#!/bin/bash
# -r option removes both the home directory and the mail spool
# rm -fr /home/$1

userdel -r $1

Script file to create a number of users

Using above the command, you can create a number of users automatically as below,

myuseradd user1 user1
myuseradd user2 user2
myuseradd user3 user3
...

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