Creating user account similar to other system

[Venkat_11]

Hi,

I want to create a user account which i want to be similar like existing in one of our other servers. I want to create with same passwd ,username and home directory.
Can i copy the line from passwd file of that particular user account and can i add the same line by editing the password file on other server where i want to create user account by vipw command.
Advice me.

Thanks in Advance

Venkat

[Pete Randall]

Yes, you can. Make sure you create the home directory and assign proper permissions, too.


Pete

[Rick Garland]

Yes, this is doable.

Do make copies of the passwd file on each server just in case.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

This approach can work on non-trusted systems. I would think there might be issues with the encryption algorythim on the password, but you should test it.

What about LDAP/NIS server?

That would simplify matters.

SEP

[Venkat_11]

after copying the lines from one server and edited the other server passwd file with vipw...and after that i created directory under /home and tried to change the permissions of that directory by using command

chown test:users test
but i observed test is getting some else user ownership of the same users group

Any suggestions to change ownership

Thanks
Venkat

[Rick Garland]

Check the UID numbers of those accounts. Make sure the UIDs are unique.

[HGN]

Hi

Hope the posting by others have helped in fixing your problem but you have not given any feedback to any of theanswers,people here spend time helping you out.

Rgds

HGN

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

You wrote, "after copying the lines from one server and edited the other server passwd file with vipw...and after that i created directory under /home and tried to change the permissions of that directory by using command".

UNIX doesn't care about the login *name* as you supply it to 'chown'. What counts is the *uid* or the numeric user ID of the account. If you cut-and-pasted the whole line from the '/etc/passwd' file on the "source" server into the '/etc/passwd' file on the "destination" server then you may have duplicated a *uid* value. You need to make it unique.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Paul Sperry]

I strongly sujest re-creating the users
using the password file on the other server
as input.

cat passwd.from.other.server |while read line
do
USER=$(echo $line|awk '{FS=":";print $1}')
PASS=$(echo $line|awk '{FS=":";print $2}')
USERID=$(echo $line|awk '{FS=":";print $3}')
GID=$(echo $line|awk '{FS=":";print $4}')
INFO=$(echo $line|awk '{FS=":";print $5}')
HOME=$(echo $line|awk '{FS=":";print $6}')
SHELL=$(echo $line|awk '{FS=":";print $7}')
echo "Adding $USER"
useradd -u $USERID -g $GID -s $SHELL -c "$INFO" -o -d $HOME -m -k /etc/skel $USER
/usr/sam/lbin/usermod.sam -p`echo "$PASS"` $USER
done


The useradd command should be all on one line