chroot option for loginutils

[Tito]

On Thursday 12 May 2011 20:22:54 Sergey Naumov wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> I recently asked whether adduser / addgroup / passwd can be used to
> set up users/groups on a target system from host machine. It is rather
> simple to add root user and create password with htpasswd, but if I
> want to create several users like quagga, snmp, stunnel and so on I
> need to do it "by hands". I have created a draft patch to busybox to
> support "-C root " option for adduser, addgroup, passwd, deluser,
> delgroup instead of reinventing the bicycle. If it is interesting for
> somebody I can refurbish it.
> Any suggestions are welcomed.
> 
> Sergey Naumov.
> 

I think this is rather easy to achieve:
1) change the  paths  in libbb.h

#ifndef _PATH_PASSWD
#define _PATH_PASSWD  "/etc/passwd"
#endif
#ifndef _PATH_GROUP
#define _PATH_GROUP   "/etc/group"
#endif
#ifndef _PATH_SHADOW
#define _PATH_SHADOW  "/etc/shadow"
#endif
#ifndef _PATH_GSHADOW
#define _PATH_GSHADOW "/etc/gshadow"
#endif

to what is suitable for you target system e.g $HOME/new_target/etc/passwd

2) compile a separate busybox binary to be used only during setup
     with all loginutils you need enabled and using bb's internal pwd_grp functions
     and name it pwd_setup 

3) create the needed empty files on the target filesystem
4) create a script calling your pwd_setup binary to add users, groups, passwd etc
    in loop for all the users you like.

Just an idea, but should work without adding code to bb.

Ciao,
Tito