How to add multiple users at a time in linux

First off you need semi colons in a for loop like this

for USER in u5 u6 u7 u8; do useradd $USER echo med+21$$5d; passwd --stdin $USER;  done

I dont really know what your trying to do here though... What is u5 u6 u7??  Are they files?

If they are files (lets say text files with usernames one line at a time) you need to do something like this:

for USER in `cat u5 u6 u7 u8`; do useradd $USER echo med+21$$5d; passwd --stdin $USER; done

But if they are text files I would combine them into one and run it, so it will actually work.

Like so...

cat u5 >> users
cat u6 >> users
cat u7 >> users
and so on... That will put everything into one file called users.

Sir. Thanks for the reply u5 , u6 and u7 all are users please suggest me .

i tried with the following
for USER in u5 u6 u7 u8 do; useradd $USER; echo med+21$$5d | passwd --stdin $USER; done
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `useradd'
You have new mail in /var/spool/mail/root

My suggestion would be to do this.

make a file using vi or any text editor and put the username one per line like so:

vi users

u5
u6
u7
u8

save the file

now run this command:
for x in `cat users`; do useradd $x; passwd --stdin $x;done


The script output will look similar to this:
[root@putorius tmp]# for x in `cat users`; do useradd $x; passwd --stdin $x;done
Changing password for user u5.
okay
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
Changing password for user u6.

as you can see I make the password for u5 okay, which is not really secure, but the loop is working. :)

Thanks for the reply i did as per your instruction the same is posted below for your reference
touch users
added users in the file one by one ( one user in one single line)
# for x in `cat users`; do useradd $x; passwd --stdin $x;done
Changing password for user user1.
passwd: Authentication information cannot be recovered
Changing password for user user2.
passwd: Authentication information cannot be recovered
Changing password for user user3.
passwd: Authentication information cannot be recovered
Changing password for user user4.

Plese sugget me where iam going wrong also it this works then what will be the password for each user. please help.

The loop should stop and you will have to enter the password for each user.  When you run it the output should look like this below:


# for x in `cat /var/tmp/users`; do useradd $x; passwd --stdin $x;done
Changing password for user u5.


and it should stop after the line "Changing password for user u5." and wait for you to enter the password and hit return, then move onto the next user.

Thanks for the reply , but in my case it is not happening so when i execute the command it takes some time and gives a message Authentication information cannot  be recovered and switches to next user, for your reference posted below please help
Changing password for user user1.
passwd: Authentication information cannot be recovered

Well I tried it on Fedora 11 which is practically the same as RHEL5.  Are you using any special auth process (ldap, etc..._)???