]> newusers 8 System Management Commands newusers update and create new users in batch newusers new_users The newusers command reads a file of user name and clear-text password pairs and uses this information to update a group of existing users or to create new users. Each line is in the same format as the standard password file (see passwd5 ) with the following exceptions: pw_passwd This field will be encrypted and used as the new value of the encrypted password. pw_gid This field must contain the name (or number) of a group. The user will be added as a member to this group. When a non-existent group name or number is specified, a new group will be created. In the case of a non-existent group number, both the name and the number of the new group will be this number. pw_dir This field will be checked for existence as a directory, and a new directory with this name will be created if it does not already exist. The ownership of the directory will be set to be that of the user being created or updated. 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: -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. -r, --system Create a system account. System users will be created with no aging information in /etc/shadow, and their numeric identifiers are choosen 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). -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. PAM is not used to update the passwords. Only /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow are updated, and the various checks or options provided by PAM modules are not used. The following configuration variables in /etc/login.defs change the behavior of this tool: &ENCRYPT_METHOD; &GID_MAX; &MAX_MEMBERS_PER_GROUP; &MD5_CRYPT_ENAB; &PASS_MAX_DAYS; &PASS_MIN_DAYS; &PASS_WARN_AGE; &SHA_CRYPT_MIN_ROUNDS; &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. login.defs5 , passwd1 , useradd8 .