newusers command - permission denied

[arkan5]

In Fedora 17, I'm trying to add a batch of users from a text file using the newusers command. I created a file named users.txt, located in root's home directory. The file is owned by the root user and root group.

The command I enter (logged in as root) is:
newusers /root/users.txt

but I keep getting this error:
newusers: /root/users.txt: Permission denied

I've tried setting the permissions on users.txt to rwxrwxrwx, but that hasn't changed the result. Please help!

[marko]

It's complaining because it's too unprotected, your chmod to 777 means anyone and every one can read that file
(no protection at all on it)

see "man newusers"

CAVEATS
The input file must be protected since it contains unencrypted passwords.

the input file argument should be a file that's only readable by root user and not executable. I'd try:

chown root /root/users.txt (probably already root owned but make sure)
chmod 400 /root/users.txt

then retry your newusers command on it.

I suppose another option is to cat the users.txt into the newusers by standard input, the man
page says it can take the input by standard input (default)

cat /root/users.txt | newusers

that avoids the whole permission issue

[arkan5]

Thanks for the reply, but I ended up reinstalling because my project deadline was nearing. It worked after that with permission set at 640. I like your redirect idea, in the future I'll try that.