I am trying to create a shell script that will:

1. check if a specific user already exists
2. if not, create a specific group and create the user in that group
3. assign a password to that user, where the password is passed in as a parameter to the script

The problem that I need help with is 3 on Solaris and AIX.

I can do 1 (using the id command) and 2 (using mkgroup or groupadd and useradd commands), but setting the password is where I am having problems. I have got it to work on Linux by redirecting input to the passwd command but I can not find how to get the same functionality to work on AIX and Solaris. This is what I have so far:

 
PLATFORM=`uname`
id $NEW_USER_ID > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ "$?" != "0" ]
then
   echo "$NEW_USER_ID user does not exist. Attempting to create user and group"
 
   if [ "$PLATFORM" = "AIX" ]
   then
      mkgroup $NEW_GROUP
   else
      groupadd $NEW_GROUP
   fi
   if [ "$?" != "0" ]
   then
      echo "Failed to create group"
   fi
 
   useradd -g $NEW_GROUP -s /usr/bin/ksh $NEW_USER_ID 
   if [ "$?" != "0" ]
   then
      echo "Failed to create $NEW_USER_ID user"
   fi
 
   if [ "$PLATFORM" = "Linux" ]
   then
      passwd --stdin $NEW_USER_ID <<EOF
$NEW_PASSWD
$NEW_PASSWD
EOF
 
      if [ "$?" != "0" ]
      then
         echo "Failed to set $NEW_USER_ID password"
      fi
   fi
fi

What was done in case of Solaris what were the errors ?

On Solaris I have tried:

1) redirecting the input as follows:

passwd $NEW_USER_ID <<EOF
> $NEW_PASSWD
> $NEW_PASSWD
> EOF

echo $NEW_PASSWD >> tempfile
echo $NEW_PASSWD >> tempfile

passwd $NEW_USER_ID < `cat tempfile`

passwd $NEW_USER_ID < tempfile

sleep 1
echo $NEW_PASSWD
sleep 1
echo $NEW_PASSWD

./script | passwd $NEW_USER_ID

Hi.

There is no way to do what you want on Solaris using the passwd command. You could download and compile a tool like chpasswd, but you don't want to do that.

One option is to change the password on one server, and then use information in the shadow file to update the other servers.

For AIX, the tool chpasswd should already be available. It's easy enough to use - check the man page.

Thanks scottn. Appreciate the answer. I'll use chpasswd on AIX and think up an alternative solution on Solaris.