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The newusers command is useful for adding or modifying users in bulk. Is there an equivalent command for managing groups?

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I haven't run across one or a reason to have one. Then main use case for new users I have seen is to add the students for a class or some other group. They would normally all belong to the same group.

Groups usually have a specific purpose. Unlike users groups don't usually come in groups.

Do you have a use case in mind?

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I'm creating a remote administration tool. The general idea is that users and groups can be retrieved over SSH, configured using the tool, then updated to the server. A newgroups command is not an absolute requirement for this case obviously but it's apparent absence made me wonder if I was missing something. – Joel Taylor Apr 21 '11 at 15:58
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@Joel: No I don't think you are missing anything there. However, I would look at using LDAP to manage the users and groups rather than the flat files in /etc. – BillThor Apr 21 '11 at 16:09
LDAP is the best option but I'm dealing with some legacy servers with interesting limitations. Maybe that's the problem I should be addressing. – Joel Taylor Apr 21 '11 at 16:26
@Joel: If you have legacy servers, you may just have to edit /etc/passwd or equivalent through VISUAL=ed vipw or even directly. – Gilles Apr 21 '11 at 20:34
@Gilles: That's what I ended up doing. – Joel Taylor Apr 21 '11 at 21:07

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