[Samba] pdbedit

[Ninti Systems]

I have a couple of questions about pdbedit.

I am having trouble using pdbedit in shell scripts.

First, on a freshly installed system with no-one in the tdbsam database,
trying to add multiple machine accounts via a loop construct in a shell
script fails with a message that the database can't be found/doesn't
exist. I then added root manually just to get the system going, which
solves that problem. 

Once the first user is added, my script seems to get stuck in an
infinite loop trying to add the first machine, but I can add a machine
manually.

Is pdbedit usable in shell scripts? I understand that normal users need
a password added, but I can't see why machine accounts can't just be
added automatically.

Does pdbedit have to be run manually for some reason?

Is there some way of initialising the tdbsam database without manually
adding a first user?

Mick