> I've been given the task of writing a script that
> automatically adds new client users on a new server
> machine. Should be a no-brainer, right? I've been
> writing stuff like that for 20 years. I wrote such a
> script for our old BSD/OS system which is essentially a
> wrapper around the adduser command. It has to do some
> other things special to our needs, too, and is run by a
> less-technical guy, which is why adduser is not used
> directly.
> 
> So now we need the same functionality on a new FreeBSD
> system, and as I examine the thing I find:
> 
> (a) FreeBSD adduser is not even remotely like adduser
>     in either BSD/OS or Linux.
> 
> (b) FreeBSD adduser does not even accept a user *name*
>     option.
> 
> (c) FreeBSD adduser does not read from stdin, so I
>     can't just say echo "newusername" | adduser -options...
>     In fact, when I try that, it goes into a wicked,
>     rapidly spinning loop that has to be killed.
> 
> Surely there must be a canonical way to get where I'm
> going from where I am, but I just don't know what it
> is. Does anyone know what the key might be?

I would think perl or expect should help with this situation.  Expect is a 
wrapper program that can make interactive programs non-interactive.  Or if 
adduser accepts input similar to adduser on linux (e.g. adduser options 
username) then have a shell script read in the desired username and then echo it 
into the command

#!/bin/bash

$USER=$1

`adduser $USER`