Bulk creation of users on Mac network ?

[pinemarten]

Maybe someone can help here please...

 

We have a network of 16 iMacs running 10.6, xserve server running 10.5 .

I would like to find a way of creating users in bulk ..

We use ADMWin on our PC network , this creates users, AD groups , folder and permissions etc - is there any Mac equivalent of this?

 

Or any less laborious way other than doing it manually one user at a time?

 

Any suggestions appreciated- cheers.

[AntonioRocco]

Hi

 

There are a number of ways of doing this. One way is to export your user base from AD. Or if ADMWin creates a tab-delimited, comma-separated or csv file use that instead. Purchase and Download Passenger from here:

 

Passenger: The Mac Server Account Creation Utility

 

It's well worth the money as it does more than just parse names etc.

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

[Chris_Cook]

Can you not bind the imacs to the AD domain? Then users can use the same username/password as on your pcs. On 10.6 you can use Directory Utility to do this, which is in Mac HD>System>Library>CoreServices.

 

Might save some work next year when the new users come.

[Tricky_Dicky]

Can you not bind the imacs to the AD domain? Then users can use the same username/password as on your pcs. On 10.6 you can use Directory Utility to do this, which is in Mac HD>System>Library>CoreServices.

 

This is Apples Magic Circle and is really useful. We have all our macs joined this way and so anyone can just login.

[AntonioRocco]

@Chris_Cool

@Tricky-Dicky

 

You can indeed bind the macs to the AD Domain. But that's not the OP's question.

 

What you can do is bind the Mac Server or a Client Workstation (with WorkGroup Manager installed) to the AD Domain. View the /Active Directory/All Domains node using WorkGroup Manager. Select all the Users and then select Export from the Server Menu. This effectively saves the User Base as it exists in AD. However it won't export passwords. Before importing into the LDAPv3 node you'd have to unbind from the AD Domain first. To export passwords you'd need to get creative with the command line on both the Windows and Mac Servers. Basically you'd export the relevant data - user names, short names, UIDs, passwords and home folder urls - from the PDC in LDIF format and import the same file into the LDAPv3 node on the Mac Server assuming you truly want a 'full' OD Master? IIRC Passenger can work with exported passwords from an Excel file. However if that's too much work simply define a Password Policy that forces users to change their password on next login. Instruct the users to define what they use on the PCs when prompted. Hopefully that should be enough?

 

What you can't have is a mac server bound to AD viewing and reading the User Base as it exists on the Windows Server and simultaneously having the same users in the LDAPv3 node. That would not be allowed as the same users can't exist in two separate directory servers connected to each other. This would also apply to Groups.

 

Antonio Rocco (ACSA)

Edited November 15, 2010 by AntonioRocco