Topic: Batch Creating User Accounts

[David O'Dwyer]

Hi.
Just a short question here.
Is it possible to add a batch of users (or more like 900 users from a textfile?
As I work for a school i need the facility to add/remove large quantites of users without too much hassle.

Thanks for your time

David

[Scott Smith]

Yes, it is possible. User account data is stored in /home/e-smith/accounts. The records resemble:

username=user|property|value...

The property|value pairs repeat. Take a look at the file, you'll be able to figure out the structure of the user entries easy enough.

Here are the relevant commands from a script I use to auto-create users. Data you will need to supply is in all upper case (see note below regarding EmailForward property, though.) If you already have the info for you 900+ users in a text file, you can either write a script to read that file and call these commands in a function, or you can read the text file and create a monolithic script with 900+ instances of these commands.

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/sbin/e-smith/db accounts set USERNAME user City 'CITY, STATE POSTCODE' FirstName FIRSTNAME Phone '(555) 555-5555' ForwardAddress 'LEAVE BLANK OR ENTER FWD ADDRESS' EmailForward forward Dept DEPTNAME LastName LASTNAME PasswordSet no Company 'MY COMPANY NAME' Street 'MY STREE ADDRESS'

/sbin/e-smith/signal-event user-create USERNAME

perl -e "use esmith::util; esmith::util::setUserPassword ( 'USERNAME', 'PASSWORD' );"

/sbin/e-smith/db accounts setprop USERNAME PasswordSet yes

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Note the use of ' ' to enclose strings which contain spaces and other special characters. The perl command is a one-liner. The options for EmailForward are:

local = deliver email locally
forward = forward to the address in ForwardAddress
both = deliver locally and forward to ForwardAddress

I've found it handy to introduce a 1-2 second sleep between each iteration of the above commands. In particular, without the sleep the password setting routines seem to have problems. In my script I call each command for all users before executing the next command -- that is, I'll create the entries in accounts for all users, then signal the user-create event for all users, then create the password, then set the PasswordSet flag. In the password setting loop, if I don't introduce the sleep then some of the passwords will not get set. With even a sleep 1, they will all succeed. Go figure.

Good luck!

[Scott Smith]

I should add that the preceding example is based on the 4.0 version. You may (or may not) need to make adjustments for 4.1

[David O'Dwyer]

Thank you very much!

I tried the command and they work up until i get to:

perl -e "use esmith::util; esmith::util::setUserPassword ( 'USERNAME', 'PASSWORD' );"

Where i get:

Failed to set Unix password for account ****

again thanks for your help.

David

[Scott Smith]

You're welcome. I'm assuming you are running these commands as root, right?

If double-checked the syntax (shown again below) which works a charm for me.


perl -e "use esmith::util;
        esmith::util::setUserPassword ( 'USERNAME', 'PASSWORD' ) ;"


Note that you can break the perl script onto two lines if you'd prefer. One should work fine, though.

Double-check /etc/passwd to ensure that the users are in fact being created. It may be that the user-create event is failing, which might be because your accounts records have a flaw, etc.

[David O'Dwyer]

hello again

To answer your question earlier i am running 4.1

I checked the /etc/passwd file and it doesnt seem like the users are being added
is it possible for u to paste ur exact scipt for me to have a look?

David

[Scott Smith]

I don't think so as it is spread across several scripts; however, I tried the code I provided earlier and it works fine.

The difference is likely between 4.0 and 4.1 -- maybe someone else can shed some light on any differences. Until then, you might have a look at the perl scripts that create users (both the event and web function code) for clues.

As I don't have a 4.1 system up and running at the moment, I can't give you much more than that. Sorry.

[David O'Dwyer]

Thanks alot for your help it is most appreciated

Where would i find the code to sift through?

Would it be possible to discuss this further? (iRC....)

David

[Scott Smith]

Unless 4.1 is substantially changed, the places to look are:

/etc/e-smith/events  --  this is where the code that signal-events runs lives

/etc/e-smith/web/functions  --  these are the scripts for the web manager

[David O'Dwyer]

Success! kind of

it seems the db accounts command line needed a GID & UID. i can add users now. and change their password. problem is they dont seem to be able to log into webmail which is the primary reason for me using this system

Oh hum. here we go again

David

[Scott Smith]

That's good. I figured there would be differences from 4.0 to 4.1.

For the webmail thing -- which I haven't looked at, so this is a guess -- there is probably some flag set elsewhere. Does 4.1 ask who does and does not have webmail access, or is it a generic everybody or nobody approach? If the former, then you should look at the code for that web manager panel, which should direct you towards the solution.

[David O'Dwyer]

No worries got it working now

Thank you for your help.

David

[Scott Smith]

That's good news, and you are most welcome.

You should post the solution for 4.1 back to the forum so the next guy (which might be me -- I'll have to move to 4.1 eventually!) can be helped as you were.