Dave Gutteridge <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 23:41:57 +0900 <snip>
>
>>> ----
>>> useradd -p PASSWORD -m roger
>>> ^ needs a ^
>>> space |
>>> | what are you trying to accomplish here?
>
>
>The web page where I got the command said I needed it. Said it was to
>create a home directory.
>
>In any case, I tried:
>useradd -p password testguy
>
>and I still can't log in at the GUI prompt with the username "testguy"
>and the password "password".
I don't know what was on the web page, but when things don't behave as expected, it's always worth looking at a man or info page. In this case, you would see that you did not use the "-p PASSWORD" param correctly. Why? A qualifying phrase often overlooked, "... as returned by crypt(3)". Exactly how they intended to make this administrator-friendly is not apparent to me. I've not easily found a CLI that will return an encrypted version of a proposed password, allowing something like
passwd -p `encryptit password` ...
'Course, my forte is not administration, so I may be just ignorant (at least, I hope that's all it is :)) ).
Most folks just byte the bullet, even in scripts, and type it in at the console. Or grab an encrypted starter passwd (possibly copied from /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow (more likely) ?) and use that and specify that passwd must be changed upon initial login.
><snip>
Bill
