Question

I’ve tried for hours to create bulk users from a text file but I cant make it work. In the text file i have the following format:

John Smith:Student

The code:

#!/bin/bash
FILE=/home/knoppix/users.txt

GECOS=$(cat $FILE | cut -d: -f1)
USRGRP=$(cat $FILE | cut -d: -f2)

groupadd -f $USRGRP

echo "type username"
read USERNM
USERPW="123456"

useradd $USERNM -p $USERPW -g $USRGRP -c "$GECOS,$USRGRP" -d $HOME/$USERNM -s $USERSH -m

It is not working, when I tried to debug the bash script I think its not reading line by line, its grabbing all the content in the fields.

I’m missing a do while or while IFS or for line in users.txt. Something like this but I’m not expert help. also should I use newusers ir just useradd.

Answer 1

i need something like do while read each line

> outFile
while read var1 var2 var3 var4 ; do
  echo $var1 $var2 $var3 >> outFile
  echo $var4 >> outFile
done < /home/knoppix/users.txt

This assumes users.txt values are separated by spaces chars and that there are 4 words per line that you want to do some processing on.

If you values are separated with something beside space chars, for example the ‘:’ char, then you have to tell the read command what to use as in IFS (InternalFieldSep), so

savIFS=${IFS}
> outFile
while IFS=":" read var1 var2 var3 var4 ; do
  echo $var1 $var2 $var3 >> outFile
  echo $var4 >> outFile
done < /home/knoppix/users.txt

IFS=${savIFS}

Also,

Code that is formed like

ECOS=$(cat $FILE | cut -d: -f1)

can be reduced to

ECOS=$( cut -d: -f1 $FILE )

Also note that for each line in $FILE, you will get a value, so if there are 3 lines of text, ECOS will be ECOS="line1Val line2Val line3Val"

I hope this helps.