How to batch-add user accounts?

["Kent West" <westk@acu.edu>]

My googling skills must be getting rusty, as I'm not finding my answer ...

Is there an easy method to add 30 or 300 user accounts to an Etch system? I'm thinking in terms of having a flat text file that looks something like:

user1,passwd1,room,phone,blah,blah,blah
user2,passwd2,room,phone,blab,blah,blah
etc...

that I can feed to an "adduser"-type of utility.

Related question: If I have these users on a Solaris system, and move the relevant encrypted password for each user from the Solaris' shadow file into Etch's shadow file (replacing what's created in the first half of this question), will the users' passwords "just work" when they try logging into Etch?


Thanks!

-- 
Kent