Using pw adduser to set password in a script

[Uwe Doering]

Jez Hancock wrote:
> I'm attempting to use pw adduser to add a new user to the system and
> would like confirmation that the following is the correct way to set
> the user's password at the same time:
> 
> echo "password" | \
> pw adduser -q -h - -u user -g group -s shell -d /home/user -c comment
> 
> Can anyone also tell me the security implications of doing this, given
> that the command is executed from a within a script (actually php but
> this is more-or-less irrelevant)?
> [...]

Here is what I use:

   echo 'password' | \
   pw useradd -q -h 0 -n user -g group -s shell -d /home/user \
     -c 'comment' -m

Note that feeding the password to 'pw' via the command line (with 
'echo') is a security problem if you have untrusted users on that 
machine, since they can see the password in the process list (with 'ps').

A better approach for automating account creation is to first store the 
password (generated or given) in a file (with secure permissions, of 
course) and then feed 'pw' from that file:

   pw useradd -q -h 0 -n user -g group -s shell -d /home/user \
     -c 'comment' -m < /path/to/file
   rm -f /path/to/file

Hope that helps.

    Uwe
-- 
Uwe Doering         |  EscapeBox - Managed On-Demand UNIX Servers
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