[xen-tools] Re: Various potential modifications

[Sascha Kettler]

You might also want to look at the chpasswd utility, which does exactly
what you want (update passwords in batch mode) and has the option to
work with pre-encrypted passwords.

This utility is included in Debian Sarge and Etch; I'm not sure about
other distros.

Sascha

Jeff Forcier wrote:
> On 10/1/07, Steve Kemp <steve at steve.org.uk> wrote:
> 
>>   My initial inclination would be to have a role script to add
>>  the accounts, but not in the way that you're currently doing
>>  (with 'passwd').  Instead have a script which takes an
>>  input file of:
>>
>>  username:password
>>
>>   (Ideally a salted + crypted password which the role script
>>  could update directly via 'pwconv' / 'usermod'?)
> 
> The same rough idea (noninteractive input via file) occurred to me as
> well; it's not as braindead-easy as interactive prompting, but at the
> same time it also allows for reuse of the requested user/pass
> combinations (theoretically such a script could still take additional
> args narrowing down which entries in the file it executes). Which
> would be nice and, at least for me, more effective in the long run
> anyways.
> 
> Wasn't aware of 'pwconv' so that will give me more manpages to read, thanks.