RHEL 5.5 user add with no password, force new password

[Jason Moorhead_2]

Hi all,

I need to create about 100 users from scratch, I'm a bit vexed on how to do the passwords. Ideally, I'd prefer to just create them all with no password, and force them to create one on first log in. Makes it much easier than to create unique passwords and email them each individually.

Is there any way to do this?

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Shalom,

You can't create them using the useradd command with no password.

What you can do is this:

1) Make a list of users
2) Scripted useradd:

while read -r uname
do
useradd $uname
done
You can then take a look at /etc/shadow and look into blanking out the password field.

that is the second field.

user1:$1$`uZja@v`$rsU5HSDMm3L8NBF1z1QzL1:14851:0:99999:7:::
user2:$1$VqWhOgsI$UFIBP2jiJ4ph0UlwqKK5E0:14852:0:99999:7:::


Then you can rule the same while loop and issue a passwd -f $uname .

Note: creating users with blank passwords is probably a SOX violation.

Better to write an expect script and set the password and email it to the user in there.

SEP

[Jason Moorhead_2]

Thanks Stephen, I'll look into something with 'expect'. I hadn't even thought about that.