[ILUG] How to automate password creation

[Niall O Broin]

On Thu, Jun 22, 2000 at 08:26:58AM +0100, Brian Cullen wrote:
> 
> I have scripted the setting up of the users by using passwd files from some
> of my IRIX boxes for this project. This has been fine with regard to the
> creating of the accounts, profiles etc, what my query is, does anyone know
> how to set passwords on these accounts without going through the pain of
> "passwd bc2" etc, etc. and inputting a password and making a note etc?
> 
> There is about 700 accounts to apply passwords to and my typing skills are
> poor! Any quick ways to do this folks?

The following little Perl program will return an encrypted password from a
plaintext command line argument


#!/usr/bin/perl
@saltchars = ('a'..'z','A'..'Z','0'..'9','.','/');
 
print password($ARGV[0]) . "\n";
exit;
 
sub password {
  my $plaintext = shift;
  my $salt = $saltchars[rand(@saltchars)] . $saltchars[rand(@saltchars)];
  return crypt($plaintext, $salt);
}

You could use this as is in conjunction with your scripts and modify
/etc/passwd (or /etc/shadow) as appropriate. Alternatively, you could read
the man pages for useradd and then use this program to generate the
arguments to the -p switch of useradd.

Don't anybody bother bitching about the program - I know it could be a
one-liner, but I'd rather Brian could read it if he's not a Perl person.
Also, I know that the salt thing is a little tautological, and I could have
just used the same salt for them all, but that just feels wrong, somehow.


Regards,


Niall