topic Re: Copy/clone user in linux in Operating System - Linux

Copy/clone user in linux

bullz — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 21:42:50 GMT

Hello all,

I have a small query on user management.

I want to create a list of users, the shell, group of these users must the same replica of an existing user.

But only the condition is, the UID must be unique, the duplication of the UID is not required here, I just want to create many users with the same group and shells

* Points will be shared without fail :)

Re: Copy/clone user in linux

Gerardo Arceri — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:28:37 GMT

Get the attributes from the existing user
suppose all users you want created are members of the groupa (primary group )and groupb groups, the shell is /bin/someshell and you want their password to be "somepass"

I'd create a txt file containing the usernames:
#cat userlist
usera
userb
userc

Then the following piece of script should do the trick

for user in `cat userlist`
do useradd $user -g groupa -G groupb -s /bin/someshell
echo somepass | passwd --stdin $user
done

Hope it was helpful!

Re: Copy/clone user in linux

Steven E. Protter — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 03:38:03 GMT

Shalom,

On HP-UX there is a profile called /etc/skel which controls default user creation.

The useradd commadn in Linux, has extra parameters that will allow you to use group or user templates.

Its all in the man page for useradd.

SEP

Re: Copy/clone user in linux

Ivan Ferreira — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 18:58:46 GMT

You can use a script like this:

#!/bin/bash

if [ $# -lt 2 ]
then
echo "Usage: $0 "
exit 1
fi

PROTOUSER=$1
NEWUSER=$2

PROTOSHELL=$(grep "$PROTOUSER:x" /etc/passwd | cut -f 7 -d ":")
PROTOGID=$(grep "$PROTOUSER:x" /etc/passwd | cut -f 3 -d ":")

echo "Adding new user $NEWUSER based on $PROTOUSER"
useradd -s $PROTOSHELL -g $PROTOGID $NEWUSER

Re: Copy/clone user in linux

Jared Middleton — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 23:18:50 GMT

We run the free web-based system admin tool "Webmin" on all of our Linux servers. It has built in functionality for doing this (user & group batch export/import) and much more. Visit www.webmin.com

Re: Copy/clone user in linux

Alexander Chuzhoy — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 09:50:25 GMT

To create 100 users with usernames user1, user2.....user99,user100 (the password is the user's name) - useful for testing:

for i in `seq 1 100`
do useradd user$i -g
echo user$i | passwd --stdin user$i
done

Re: Copy/clone user in linux

bullz — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 06:51:33 GMT

Thanks all,

I will look for option "Webmin".