How to add user with admin priviledges to multiple machines

Question

Hi all,
I would like to be able to create a local ARD user on each machine on the network, with admin privileges on the machine. Is this possible?
The custom client installer seems to only allow adding standard users. Is there away I can create a Unix command that I could send to each machine, to add an administrator user? Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Since machines ship with ARD 2 already installed, rather than go through the hassle of creating a Client package and having to edit that, you can simply run a shell script to take care of everything.
We utilze a BASH script to create the ARD user, set the password of the user, hide it in the login window, add the user to the sudoers file (just to make sure the user can sudo), and add the path to kickstart to the PATH variable in the default .profile (/etc/profile) so that you can use kickstart without having to type the entire path.
Script follows:
#!/bin/bash
# add kickstart to path
echo "PATH="\"/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManag ement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources:/Developer/Tools"\"" >> /etc/profile
export path
# add ARD user
niutil -create . /users/arduser
niutil -createprop . /users/arduser gid 499
niutil -createprop . /users/arduser uid 499
niutil -createprop . /users/arduser shell /bin/bash
niutil -createprop . /users/arduser home /private/var
niutil -createprop . /users/arduser realname ard
niutil -createprop . /users/arduser shadowpasswd
niutil -appendprop . /groups/admin users arduser
# now set the passwd for the ard user
dscl . -passwd /Users/arduser ardpass
# now add to the sudoers file
echo "arduser ALL=(ALL) ALL" >> /etc/sudoers
# now hide the ARD user from the loginwindow process
mkdir /var/temp/
cp /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist /var/temp/com.apple.loginwindow.bak
defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow HiddenUsersList -array-add arduser
/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/ki ckstart -configure -users arduser -access -on -privs -all
exit 0
Just copy that into a text file, chmod it to 755 and you can then run it on the machine. We will put it at the root of the hard drive, run it, and then remove it. If you want the script to delete itself, just put the following before "exit 0":
rm $0
That will delete the file.
Hope that helps out.
Steve
XServe G5, XServe RAID (1TB), MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6)