]> Julianne Frances Haugh Creation, 1991 Thomas Kłoczko kloczek@pld.org.pl shadow-utils maintainer, 2000 - 2007 Nicolas François nicolas.francois@centraliens.net shadow-utils maintainer, 2007 - now newusers 8 System Management Commands shadow-utils &SHADOW_UTILS_VERSION; newusers update and create new users in batch newusers options file The newusers command reads a file (or the standard input by default) and uses this information to update a set of existing users or to create new users. Each line is in the same format as the standard password file (see passwd5 ) with the exceptions explained below: pw_name:pw_passwd:pw_uid:pw_gid:pw_gecos:pw_dir:pw_shell pw_name This is the name of the user. It can be the name of a new user or the name of an existing user (or a user created before by newusers). In case of an existing user, the user's information will be changed, otherwise a new user will be created. pw_passwd This field will be encrypted and used as the new value of the encrypted password. pw_uid This field is used to define the UID of the user. If the field is empty, a new (unused) UID will be defined automatically by newusers. If this field contains a number, this number will be used as the UID. If this field contains the name of an existing user (or the name of a user created before by newusers), the UID of the specified user will be used. If the UID of an existing user is changed, the files ownership of the user's file should be fixed manually. pw_gid This field is used to define the primary group ID for the user. If this field contains the name of an existing group (or a group created before by newusers), the GID of this group will be used as the primary group ID for the user. If this field is a number, this number will be used as the primary group ID of the user. If no groups exist with this GID, a new group will be created with this GID, and the name of the user. If this field is empty, a new group will be created with the name of the user and a GID will be automatically defined by newusers to be used as the primary group ID for the user and as the GID for the new group. If this field contains the name of a group which does not exist (and was not created before by newusers), a new group will be created with the specified name and a GID will be automatically defined by newusers to be used as the primary group ID for the user and GID for the new group. pw_gecos This field is copied in the GECOS field of the user. pw_dir This field is used to define the home directory of the user. If this field does not specify an existing directory, the specified directory is created, with ownership set to the user being created or updated and its primary group. 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. If the home directory of an existing user is changed, newusers does not move or copy the content of the old directory to the new location. This should be done manually. pw_shell This field defines the shell of the user. No checks are performed on this field. newusers first tries to create or change all the specified users, and then write these changes to the user or group databases. If an error occurs (except in the final writes to the databases), no changes are committed to the databases. During this first pass, users are created with a locked password (and passwords are not changed for the users which are not created). A second pass is used to update the passwords using PAM. Failures to update a password are reported, but will not stop the other password updates. This command is intended to be used in a large system environment where many accounts are updated at a single time. The options which apply to the newusers command are: --badname  Allow names that do not conform to standards. -c, --crypt-method Use the specified method to encrypt the passwords. The available methods are DES, MD5, NONE, and SHA256 or SHA512 if your libc support these methods. -h, --help Display help message and exit. -r, --system Create a system account. System users will be created with no aging information in /etc/shadow, and their numeric identifiers are chosen in the SYS_UID_MIN-SYS_UID_MAX range, defined in login.defs, instead of UID_MIN-UID_MAX (and their GID counterparts for the creation of groups). -R, --root CHROOT_DIR Apply changes in the CHROOT_DIR directory and use the configuration files from the CHROOT_DIR directory. Only absolute paths are supported. -s, --sha-rounds Use the specified number of rounds to encrypt the passwords. The value 0 means that the system will choose the default number of rounds for the crypt method (5000). A minimal value of 1000 and a maximal value of 999,999,999 will be enforced. You can only use this option with the SHA256 or SHA512 crypt method. By default, the number of rounds is defined by the SHA_CRYPT_MIN_ROUNDS and SHA_CRYPT_MAX_ROUNDS variables in /etc/login.defs. The input file must be protected since it contains unencrypted passwords. You should make sure the passwords and the encryption method respect the system's password policy. The following configuration variables in /etc/login.defs change the behavior of this tool: &ENCRYPT_METHOD; &GID_MAX; &HOME_MODE; &MAX_MEMBERS_PER_GROUP; &MD5_CRYPT_ENAB; &PASS_MAX_DAYS; &PASS_MIN_DAYS; &PASS_WARN_AGE; &SHA_CRYPT_MIN_ROUNDS; &SUB_GID_COUNT; &SUB_UID_COUNT; &SYS_GID_MAX; &SYS_UID_MAX; &UID_MAX; &UMASK; /etc/passwd User account information. /etc/shadow Secure user account information. /etc/group Group account information. /etc/gshadow Secure group account information. /etc/login.defs Shadow password suite configuration. /etc/pam.d/newusers PAM configuration for newusers. /etc/subgid Per user subordinate group IDs. /etc/subuid Per user subordinate user IDs. login.defs5 , passwd1 , subgid5 , subuid5 , useradd8 .