Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 16:04:51 +0100 From: Matthew Seaman <m.seaman@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: Martyn Hill <m.hill@st-james-snrgirls.w-london.sch.uk> Cc: Questions FreeBSD <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: How do I use the -h option in PW to set passwords fo rnew users Message-ID: <20020914150451.GA48316@happy-idiot-talk.infracaninophi> In-Reply-To: <000701c25bf5$2d8fa920$f801000a@maya.net> References: <000701c25bf5$2d8fa920$f801000a@maya.net>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sat, Sep 14, 2002 at 02:46:50PM +0100, Martyn Hill wrote:
> I need to set-up about 200 user accounts under FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE for the
> school pupil and staff population. We run Samba-TNG to share files, but need
> to create the UNIX users first. I intend to run a simple script to create
> the users with a pre-prepared password.
>
> I've looked at PW but can't understand how the -h option is supposed to work
> for setting initial passwords for new users. How do I specify the "file
> descriptor" as described in the man page?
>
> I've tried creating a file containing the password and specifying:
>
> pw adduser ... -h /path_to_file_containing_users_password
>
You can use bourne shell to do that very easily:
% echo "foobar" > /tmp/pass
% su root -c sh
Password:
# pw useradd -n test -c "Test User" -m -h 3 3< /tmp/pass
# grep test /etc/master.passwd
test:$1$T2tu0BET$UGPrNB1FavzjlzhTwUWRN.:1002:1002::0:0:Test User:/home/test:/bin/sh
# exit
% su test
Password: [typed "foobar" here...]
$ exit
The crucial bit is the '3<' construct: see the section on
"Redirections" in the sh(1) man page for details --- bash(1), ksh(1),
zsh(1) etc all support a similar mechanism, but csh(1) and tcsh(1)
don't.
You should probably use a file descriptor greater than 2 for this, as
fd's 0, 1, 2 usually correspond to stdin, stdout and stderr
respectively.
Cheers,
Matthew
--
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil. 26 The Paddocks
Savill Way
Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614 Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20020914150451.GA48316>