Re: [ILUG-BOM] creating user from /etc/passwd file ?

On Tuesday 20 May 2008, Agnello George wrote:

HI i had a small query, i wanted to know if it is possible to create a home directory for a particular user by just editing the /etc/passwd file.

Suppose for eg : i have abt 1000 unix users, and due to some unforseen reasons my server crashes, however i have copy of the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow file , Now is there a way to directly add those ( 1000 odd user ) to my system with out actually manually using the useradd command

You could manually do the things that useradd does (assign new userID, create passwd entry, create group entry, create shadow entry, create home directory, etc.), but why would you want to reinvent the wheel when useradd already does all that so well?

Regards,

-- Raju