Wicked Cool Shell Scripts

#94 Adding a User to a Mac OS X System

Earlier in the book, in Script #44, you saw the basic steps involved in adding a new user to a typical Unix or Linux system. The Mac OS X version is fundamentally quite similar. In essence, you prompt for an account name and login shell, append the appropriate information to the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files, create the new user's home directory, and set an initial password of some sort. With Mac OS X it's not quite this simple, because appending information to /etc/passwd will not create a new Aqua account. Instead, the information must be injected into the NetInfo system using the niutil command.

The Code

 #!/bin/sh # addmacuser - Adds a new user to the system, including building the # home ...