samba - Jun 2000 - adding samba passwds

Hi,

As I understand samba now, in order to be able to login from windows,
he should execute the command  "smbpasswd -a userpassword" in his 
linux box first.

We are adding large number of users to our linux box by using the 
"newusers" command in linux. The newusers command helps us to have
an initial passwd for the users. My questions are

At present windows login for users is enabled by the sysadm executing
the smbpasswd command as the user, after creating the account. 

But this is a very cumbersome process when we create around 500 users
at one go. Is there any way this can be overcome ?

Suresh
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Suresh Kumar.R, 		              Email: suresh@mycampus.com
Dept of Electronics & Communication
College of Engineering, Trivandrum - 695 016, INDIA
Phone: (O) 91 471 414634/418379, (R) 91 471 443496

[Suresh Kumar. R <sudhas@md3.vsnl.net.in>]
> At present windows login for users is enabled by the sysadm executing
> the smbpasswd command as the user, after creating the account.
> 
> But this is a very cumbersome process when we create around 500 users
> at one go. Is there any way this can be overcome ?
According to `man newusers', it takes a rather simple input format.
Try feeding that same input to the following script (*after* you run
newusers):

  #!/bin/sh
  PATH=/usr/local/samba/bin:/usr/bin
  while IFS=: read u p ignored; do
    echo -n "Adding user $u to smbpasswd..."
    { echo "$p"; echo "$p"; } | smbpasswd -s -a
"$u" >&- &&
    echo "done."
  done

Now you know why all Unix admins need to know shell scripting.  It just
saves *so* much time.

Peter