[NTLUG:Discuss] Re: Create User Account

[Dennis Rice]

Your point regarding security and the encrypted password being in the 
history is absolutely correct.  My thoughts were explaining a method, 
not being recommended just because it is harder than the two separate 
commands.

I agree that you noting about the man page, but it does not return the 
encrypted password, at least it does not when you use the command 
"useradd username -p 'password' ".  It should, but...  I have used the 
command and saw that it is putting the unencrypted password into the 
shadow file, at least in Fedora Core 3.

Dennis

Ken Loafman wrote:
 From the man page (your friend):
       -p, --password PASSWORD
              The encrypted password, as returned by crypt(3)...

mkpasswd is a front-end to crypt(3).

It's not a good idea to use passwords on the command line anyway. 
'history' would reveal them, and they are visible in process display 
commands, besides being visible when you type them.  It's never too 
early (grandson or class) to start lessons on computer security.