newusers(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CAVEATS | CONFIGURATION | FILES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

NEWUSERS(8)            System Management Commands            NEWUSERS(8)

NAME         top

       newusers - update and create new users in batch

SYNOPSIS         top


       newusers [options] [file]

DESCRIPTION         top

       The newusers command reads a file (or the standard input by
       default) and uses this information to update a set 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 exceptions
       explained below:

       pw_name:pw_passwd:pw_uid:pw_gid:pw_gecos:pw_dir:pw_shell

       pw_name
           This is the name of the user.

           It can be the name of a new user or the name of an existing
           user (or a user created before by newusers). In case of an
           existing user, the user's information will be changed,
           otherwise a new user will be created.

       pw_passwd
           This field will be encrypted and used as the new value of the
           encrypted password.

       pw_uid
           This field is used to define the UID of the user.

           If the field is empty, a new (unused) UID will be defined
           automatically by newusers.

           If this field contains a number, this number will be used as
           the UID.

           If this field contains the name of an existing user (or the
           name of a user created before by newusers), the UID of the
           specified user will be used.

           If the UID of an existing user is changed, the files
           ownership of the user's file should be fixed manually.

       pw_gid
           This field is used to define the primary group ID for the
           user.

           If this field contains the name of an existing group (or a
           group created before by newusers), the GID of this group will
           be used as the primary group ID for the user.

           If this field is a number, this number will be used as the
           primary group ID of the user. If no groups exist with this
           GID, a new group will be created with this GID, and the name
           of the user.

           If this field is empty, a new group will be created with the
           name of the user and a GID will be automatically defined by
           newusers to be used as the primary group ID for the user and
           as the GID for the new group.

           If this field contains the name of a group which does not
           exist (and was not created before by newusers), a new group
           will be created with the specified name and a GID will be
           automatically defined by newusers to be used as the primary
           group ID for the user and GID for the new group.

       pw_gecos
           This field is copied in the GECOS field of the user.

       pw_dir
           This field is used to define the home directory of the user.

           If this field does not specify an existing directory, the
           specified directory is created, with ownership set to the
           user being created or updated and its primary group. Note
           that newusers does not create parent directories of the new
           user's home directory. The newusers command will fail to
           create the home directory if the parent directories do not
           exist, and will send a message to stderr informing the user
           of the failure. The newusers command will not halt or return
           a failure to the calling shell if it fails to create the home
           directory, it will continue to process the batch of new users
           specified.

           If the home directory of an existing user is changed,
           newusers does not move or copy the content of the old
           directory to the new location. This should be done manually.

       pw_shell
           This field defines the shell of the user. No checks are
           performed on this field.

       newusers first tries to create or change all the specified users,
       and then write these changes to the user or group databases. If
       an error occurs (except in the final writes to the databases), no
       changes are committed to the databases.

       During this first pass, users are created with a locked password
       (and passwords are not changed for the users which are not
       created). A second pass is used to update the passwords using
       PAM. Failures to update a password are reported, but will not
       stop the other password updates.

       This command is intended to be used in a large system environment
       where many accounts are updated at a single time.

OPTIONS         top

       The options which apply to the newusers command are:

       --badname
           Allow names that do not conform to standards.

       -h, --help
           Display help message and exit.

       -r, --system
           Create a system account.

           System users will be created with no aging information in
           /etc/shadow, and their numeric identifiers are chosen 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).

       -R, --root CHROOT_DIR
           Apply changes in the CHROOT_DIR directory and use the
           configuration files from the CHROOT_DIR directory. Only
           absolute paths are supported.

CAVEATS         top

       The input file must be protected since it contains unencrypted
       passwords.

CONFIGURATION         top

       The following configuration variables in /etc/login.defs change
       the behavior of this tool:

       GID_MAX (number), GID_MIN (number)
           Range of group IDs used for the creation of regular groups by
           useradd, groupadd, or newusers.

           The default value for GID_MIN (resp.  GID_MAX) is 1000 (resp.
           60000).

       HOME_MODE (number)
           The mode for new home directories. If not specified, the
           UMASK is used to create the mode.

           useradd and newusers use this to set the mode of the home
           directory they create.

       MAX_MEMBERS_PER_GROUP (number)
           Maximum members per group entry. When the maximum is reached,
           a new group entry (line) is started in /etc/group (with the
           same name, same password, and same GID).

           The default value is 0, meaning that there are no limits in
           the number of members in a group.

           This feature (split group) permits to limit the length of
           lines in the group file. This is useful to make sure that
           lines for NIS groups are not larger than 1024 characters.

           If you need to enforce such limit, you can use 25.

           Note: split groups may not be supported by all tools (even in
           the Shadow toolsuite). You should not use this variable
           unless you really need it.

       PASS_MAX_DAYS (number)
           The maximum number of days a password may be used. If the
           password is older than this, a password change will be
           forced. If not specified, -1 will be assumed (which disables
           the restriction).

       PASS_MIN_DAYS (number)
           The minimum number of days allowed between password changes.
           Any password changes attempted sooner than this will be
           rejected. If not specified, 0 will be assumed (which disables
           the restriction).

       PASS_WARN_AGE (number)
           The number of days warning given before a password expires. A
           zero means warning is given only upon the day of expiration,
           a negative value means no warning is given. If not specified,
           no warning will be provided.

       SUB_GID_MIN (number), SUB_GID_MAX (number), SUB_GID_COUNT
       (number)
           If /etc/subuid exists, the commands useradd and newusers
           (unless the user already have subordinate group IDs) allocate
           SUB_GID_COUNT unused group IDs from the range SUB_GID_MIN to
           SUB_GID_MAX for each new user.

           The default values for SUB_GID_MIN, SUB_GID_MAX,
           SUB_GID_COUNT are respectively 100000, 600100000 and 65536.

       SUB_UID_MIN (number), SUB_UID_MAX (number), SUB_UID_COUNT
       (number)
           If /etc/subuid exists, the commands useradd and newusers
           (unless the user already have subordinate user IDs) allocate
           SUB_UID_COUNT unused user IDs from the range SUB_UID_MIN to
           SUB_UID_MAX for each new user.

           The default values for SUB_UID_MIN, SUB_UID_MAX,
           SUB_UID_COUNT are respectively 100000, 600100000 and 65536.

       SYS_GID_MAX (number), SYS_GID_MIN (number)
           Range of group IDs used for the creation of system groups by
           useradd, groupadd, or newusers.

           The default value for SYS_GID_MIN (resp.  SYS_GID_MAX) is 101
           (resp.  GID_MIN-1).

       SYS_UID_MAX (number), SYS_UID_MIN (number)
           Range of user IDs used for the creation of system users by
           useradd or newusers.

           The default value for SYS_UID_MIN (resp.  SYS_UID_MAX) is 101
           (resp.  UID_MIN-1).

       UID_MAX (number), UID_MIN (number)
           Range of user IDs used for the creation of regular users by
           useradd or newusers.

           The default value for UID_MIN (resp.  UID_MAX) is 1000 (resp.
           60000).

       UMASK (number)
           The file mode creation mask is initialized to this value. If
           not specified, the mask will be initialized to 022.

           useradd and newusers use this mask to set the mode of the
           home directory they create if HOME_MODE is not set.

           It is also used by pam_umask as the default umask value.

FILES         top

       /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.

       /etc/pam.d/newusers
           PAM configuration for newusers.

       /etc/subgid
           Per user subordinate group IDs.

       /etc/subuid
           Per user subordinate user IDs.

SEE ALSO         top

       login.defs(5), passwd(1), subgid(5), subuid(5), useradd(8).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the shadow-utils (utilities for managing
       accounts and shadow password files) project.  Information about
       the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩.  If you have a bug
       report for this manual page, send it to
       pkg-shadow-devel@alioth-lists.debian.net.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2023-12-15.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there
       is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

shadow-utils 4.11.1            12/22/2023                    NEWUSERS(8)

Pages that refer to this page: newgidmap(1)newuidmap(1)subgid(5)subuid(5)chpasswd(8)useradd(8)