Technical Report: Automating User and Group Creation
Published: 2024-07-03 14:47:58

**Overview**
As a DevOps Engineer, automating the management of users and groups is crucial for maintaining a streamlined and secure environment. This report details the automation process for creating users and groups using a shell script. The script ensures consistent and efficient management of user accounts and group memberships across multiple servers.

**Objectives**
**Automate User Creation**: Automatically create user accounts with predefined settings.
**Automate Group Creation:** Create user groups and assign users to these groups.
**Ensure Security and Consistency:** Implement secure practices and maintain consistency in user and group configurations.
Simplify User Management: Reduce manual effort and errors associated with user management tasks.
Prerequisites
**Linux Server: **The script is designed for Linux-based systems.
**Administrative Privileges:** Root or sudo access is required to create users and groups.
**Shell Scripting Environment:** Bash shell is used for scripting.
**Script Details**
1. User and Group Creation Script
![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/6mghw6beuo90gbaj95f7.jpg)
**2. Script Explanation**
Function: create_group
- Check if a group exists using getent group.

- If the group does not exist, it creates the group using groupadd.

- Logs the creation status.
**Function: create_user
**

- Checks if a user exists using id.

- If the user does not exist, it creates the user with useradd, assigns a home directory, group, and default shell.

- Sets the user's password using chpasswd.

- Logs the creation status.
**Groups Array

**Lists the groups to be created.

- Iterates over the array and calls create_group for each group.
**Users Array
**
- Lists the users to be created in the format username:group:password.

- Iterates over the array, splits the string, and calls create_user for 
   each user.
**3. Execution**
**Save Script:** Save the script as create_users_and_groups.sh.
Make Executable: Ensure the script is executable:

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/p2g9we95i7nb7m3xe0kd.jpg)
**Run Script**: Execute the script with root or sudo privileges:

![Image description](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/vpkr9u20utprz19hnwc6.jpg)

## Benefits
**
**Consistency**: Ensures that users and groups are created with the same settings across different systems.
**Efficiency**: Reduces the time and effort required to manually create users and groups.
**Security**: Minimizes human errors that could lead to security vulnerabilities.
**Scalability**: Easily scales to add more users and groups by modifying the arrays in the script.

## **Conclusion**
Automating the creation of users and groups is an essential task for DevOps Engineers to manage large-scale environments effectively. The provided shell script simplifies this process, ensuring consistent and secure user management. By incorporating this automation, organizations can enhance their operational efficiency and reduce the risk of errors in user and group management. Thanks to [(https://hng.tech/premium)} for the internship opportunity to work and learn from the best.