linux-user-onboarding

script for onboarding new hires on a linux box instead of typing useradd 50 times.

reads a csv of new people and for each one:

creates the account + home dir
adds them to their dept group (hr_group, it_group, etc). makes the group if it doesn't exist yet
gives them a random temp password and forces a change on first login (chage -d 0)
chmod 700 on their home so nobody else can poke around

skips bad usernames, people who already exist, and depts with no group mapped.

run it

python3 onboard.py new_hires.csv --dry-run   # see what it would do, no root needed
sudo python3 onboard.py new_hires.csv

csv format:

Name,Department,Target_Username
Sara Ahmed,HR,sahmed

temp passwords get written to onboarded_creds.csv (only root can read it). hand them out then delete the file.

test this in a VM or container, not your main machine. it's making real users.

uses subprocess.run with list args, no shell=True, so a weird name in the csv can't inject commands
passwords come from secrets not random since random isn't meant for security stuff
to add a dept just add it to dept_groups at the top