Chris, Totally agree, this 'should' be part of the shadow password utils. Peter. On Fri, 2003-08-08 at 10:03, Chris Puttick wrote:

I just keep coming back to newusers - from the man page:

update and create new users in batch

SYNOPSIS newusers [new_users]

DESCRIPTION newusers reads a file of user name and cleartext 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 passwd(5)) with the following exceptions.

-----Original Message----- From: Andrew Nix To: suse-linux-uk-schools@suse.com Sent: 8/8/03 9:57 AM Subject: Re: [suse-linux-uk-schools] addins users to groups....... 500+

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On Friday 08 August 2003 09:23, Andrew Nix wrote:

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Yes, I think that I am confusing the issue by a factor of X^Y. Unlike Debian's 'useradd', SuSE doesn't offer the same functionality. Therefore, still using the same command as you have been using, change "useradd" for "usermod" and then try it.

I changed the it to usermod. But I get the reply user Students doesnt exsist. Below is the exact command issued. Is there something wrong with it? Or is theresomething else i need to add to it?

for i in $(cat ./KS3_20023_PUPILS.csv | awk -F, '{print $1}'); do usermod $1 -G @Students; done

I also tried it with a text file and the command is this:

for i in $(cat ./Group\ Adding); do usermod $i -G Students; done

I get the same error message with the above code. However, it does work fine on SuSE8.2 if you use useradd instead of usermod :-)

for i in $(cat ./newusers); do useradd $i -G students; done

I use 8.2 and I agree it would work if the users werent already set up. But as they are it just tells me that they do exsist! Any other ideas?

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Alastair

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But each time I get the same response. Any idea anyone? Cheers

-- Andrew Nix