Pushing Out User Account Using ARD

Question

Does anyone know if it is possible to push an entire user account from the administrative computer to a client computer? I am trying to come up with an easy way to create a new user account on 35 student computers in a lab setting. Thanks

Answer 1

Hi
You should be able to achieve this using the command line? The commands that follow need to be run as root. As an example let's use one of Apple's 'favourite' test users - Howie Doitt.
Create a new entry in the local domain under the category /Users
dscl . -create /Users/howiedoitt
Create and set the shell property
dscl . -create /Users/howiedoitt UserShell /bin/bash
Create and set the user’s full name
dscl . -create /Users/howiedoitt RealName "Howie Doitt"
Create and set the user’s ID (assuming only one account?)
dscl . -create /Users/howiedoitt UniqueID 510
Create and set the user’s group ID (the default staff group)
dscl . -create /Users/howiedoitt PrimaryGroupID 20
Create and set the user home directory
dscl . -create /Users/howiedoitt NFSHomeDirectory /Local/Users/howiedoitt
Set the password - if desired?
dscl . -passwd /Users/howiedoitt whateverpasswordyouwant
If you would like howiedoitt to be able to perform administrative duties
dscl . -append /Groups/admin GroupMembership howiedoitt
Restart the workstation(s) or log out the current user and log in again as the new user for changes to take effect. If there was no home folder created it will be created on successful login with the appropriate POSIX permissions set. You could pre-create the home folder in /Users using the mkdir command making sure you define that folder's name as the created user's shortname.
There are a number of ways of doing the above using ARD. You could do it command by command applied to a selected list of computers. Or combine the whole lot into a script and run the script. You could even schedule when the script can be run.
Tony