As a SysOps engineer, managing user accounts and groups efficiently is a crucial task. Automation through scripting can significantly streamline this process, ensuring consistency and saving time. In this guide, we'll walk through a bash script that automates the creation of users and groups based on a provided text file. This script also sets up home directories, generates random passwords, and securely logs all actions.
Script Overview
Our script, create_users.sh, performs the following tasks:
- Reads a text file containing usernames and group names.
- Creates users and personal groups.
- Assigns users to additional groups.
- Generates and assigns random passwords.
- Logs all actions to
/var/log/user_management.log. - Stores passwords securely in
/var/secure/user_passwords.txt.
Script Breakdown
Input Validation:
if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
echo "Usage: $0 <name-of-text-file>"
exit 1
fi
File and Directory Setup:
USER_FILE=$1
LOG_FILE="/var/log/user_management.log"
PASSWORD_FILE="/var/secure/user_passwords.txt"
mkdir -p /var/secure
touch $PASSWORD_FILE
chmod 600 $PASSWORD_FILE
touch $LOG_FILE
Logging Function:
log_action() {
echo "$(date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S') - $1" >> $LOG_FILE
}
Reading and Processing the Input File:
while IFS=';' read -r username groups; do
username=$(echo $username | xargs)
groups=$(echo $groups | xargs)
[ -z "$username" ] && continue
...
done < $USER_FILE
User and Group Creation:
if ! getent group $username > /dev/null; then
groupadd $username
log_action "Created group: $username"
fi
if ! id -u $username > /dev/null 2>&1; then
useradd -m -g $username -s /bin/bash $username
log_action "Created user: $username with personal group: $username"
fi
Assigning Additional Groups:
if [ -n "$groups" ]; then
IFS=',' read -ra ADDITIONAL_GROUPS <<< "$groups"
for group in "${ADDITIONAL_GROUPS[@]}"; do
group=$(echo $group | xargs)
if ! getent group $group > /dev/null; then
groupadd $group
log_action "Created group: $group"
fi
usermod -aG $group $username
log_action "Added user $username to group: $group"
done
fi
Generating and Storing Passwords:
PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -base64 12)
echo "$username:$PASSWORD" | chpasswd
log_action "Set password for user: $username"
echo "$username,$PASSWORD" >> $PASSWORD_FILE
Conclusion
This bash script automates the user management process, ensuring efficiency and security. By integrating this script into your system administration routine, you can handle user accounts and groups with ease.
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