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Author small problem
izyrajder

2004-03-12, 6:34 am


Hello,
I am a teacher of Electrical Machines
and user (beginner) of Solaris.
I have an small problem during my work.
The answer my question makes easier the exercises.
Does exist command (or a couple of command)
of root will set this same password
for every user (group od user)?
Can write with this command a short programm
(csh )?
thanx
adrian


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joe durusau

2004-03-12, 9:36 am



izyrajder wrote:

> Hello,
> I am a teacher of Electrical Machines
> and user (beginner) of Solaris.
> I have an small problem during my work.
> The answer my question makes easier the exercises.
> Does exist command (or a couple of command)
> of root will set this same password
> for every user (group od user)?
> Can write with this command a short programm
> (csh )?
> thanx
> adrian
>
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.613 / Virus Database: 392 - Release Date: 2004-03-04


First of all, that's an extremely rotton idea, even in an
academic environment. The system is designed to make it
hard to do this sort of thing, but the most bullet-proof way
should you insist on doing it is to install a product called expect.

In an academic environment, the accepted way is to chain a
student assistant to the console and make him/her set the
passwords by hand.

You could install sudo so that said student cound only change
passwords and not do anything else, but you had better be familiar
with the way to get in if the root password get gummed up by
accident or design.

Speaking only for myself,

Joe Durusau



Doug Freyburger

2004-03-15, 9:37 am

joe durusau wrote:
> izyrajder wrote:
>
>
> First of all, that's an extremely rotton idea, even in an
> academic environment.


It's a rotten idea because if you do this at all, you must not use
any work from the accounts whatsoever to determine grades. The
students will know each others passwords from the gate and that is
a recipe for disaster.

> The system is designed to make it
> hard to do this sort of thing, but the most bullet-proof way
> should you insist on doing it is to install a product called expect.


Since the encrypted version of the passwords are stored in a colon
separated field in /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow (Solaris per OP) or
similar file on other systems, any tool that can use ":" as a field
separator will do fine. awk, sed, perl, you name it will all make
it easy to cut-n-paste the encrypted password string to multiple
accounts. At which point all possibility of used any computer work
towards a grade goes out the window and files straight into the
school's cheating bit bucket.

> In an academic environment, the accepted way is to chain a
> student assistant to the console and make him/her set the
> passwords by hand.


Not even that. Set all of the accounts at creation time to insist
on resetting their password at first login. The Solaris sysadmin
GUI does a fine job of creating accounts like that. Just use the
tool to create all of the accounts and give them all the different
initial passwords yourself.
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