I have two opening remarks to make:

1. Very carefully! ;-)
2. You haven't really given enough information for an intelligent answer.

One of the variables involved here is weather or not you are running in a shadow'ed environment or not. This will slightly change the methodology. The basic steps of adding an account to a Unix (or Linux) box are as follows:

• Collecting the user information
  • User Account Name
  • User's personal name
  • Their password or generating a default password
  • Decide where their home directory is going to live.
  • Decide what shell they are going to use. (/bin/false?)
• Generate a crypted version their password
• Decide what numerical userid/groupid(s) they are being assigned
• write their /etc/password entry and optionally their /etc/shadow entry.
• create their home directory
• set the home directory's permissions and ownership
• copy any /etc/skel files or other standardized configuration files to the home directory and set their permissions and ownerships.
• drink a beer

Now that I have given you a short course on how to generate a unix account, you should be able to use the above guide to write your script. Really... it isn't all that hard...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Peter L. Berghold --- Peter@Berghold.Net
"Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it."

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