Directory tools for Edubuntu server

[Andy Figueroa]

I love good gui tools for managing users, but they are tedious and time
consuming for making many changes, additions, or deletions.

Depending on what user and group items are being managed, the most powerful
tool for changing group permissions for established users is directly
editing the /etc/group file as root using a text editor.

Likewise, adding and deleting users is most expediently done by the
administrator as root from the command line.  For adding many users at a
time, a little shell script like that below makes my day.  This is an actual
except from the script that I use:

useradd -m -G scanner,plugdev,audio,video,cdrom,games,fuse -s /bin/bash jcarson
useradd -m -G scanner,plugdev,audio,video,cdrom,games,fuse -s /bin/bash ccarson
useradd -m -G scanner,plugdev,audio,video,cdrom,games,fuse -s /bin/bash bcarson
useradd -m -G scanner,plugdev,audio,video,cdrom,games,fuse -s /bin/bash dcarson

The to set the password, put the ids and passwords into a file ("pw2" in
this example) and run:
chpasswd < pw2

"pw2 needs to be in the format userid:password with one user on each line as
follows:

bcarson:12345678
jcarson:2345679
ccarson:34567890
bcarson:45678901

(real passwords were not used in the example)

As always, YMMV.

Andy Figueroa

David Groos wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I need to find a better way to manage my users.  The 'Users and Groups'
> app is too awkward.  With 150 users it is a long list AND it isn't even
> sortable by username!  When I go to edit a group, the names are listed
> in a long horizontal line, 1 user after another, separated by semicolons.
> 
> Is this a use-case for LDAP?  Is there an alternative to Users and Groups?
> 
> Also, our school already uses an LDAP (or it may be a Windows Active
> Directory)--is there some way to tie into that but manage group
> membership at the level of my thin client network that wouldn't
> interfere with the school-wide setting?
> 
> Thanks some more!
> David
>