That's because non-interactive changing of passwords is a dangerous thing. Don't go there unless you're absolutely sure what you're going to do. If you mess up, *NOONE* will be able to log anymore, and you'll need to do some massive recovery. Do you have your backup tapes ready? Do you know which steps to take to recover your system? Have to checked that your backup procedure is actually working? Can you read from your backup tape?

Here's a hint (I ain't going to spoon feed you on things changing the passwords, if you need handhelding, you shouldn't be doing this). /usr/bin/passwd reads directly from the (pseudo)-terminal, not from STDIN.

Abigail


In reply to Re: Unix password change by Abigail-II
in thread Unix password change by pbinstead

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.