On 04/10/05, Bill Maltby <wild-bill@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 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.
>
Not really relevant to this particular thread but the passwd
interaction can be automated using the expect script autopasswd. It
doesn't appear to be included in the expect RPM on current Redhat
systems anymore though so you'll have to find it elsewhere.
http://www.grape-info.com/doc/linux/root/autopasswd.html
Will.
