passmass
(1)
Name
passmass - change password on multiple machines
Synopsis
passmass [ host1 host2 host3 ... ]
Description
User Commands PASSMASS(1)
NAME
passmass - change password on multiple machines
SYNOPSIS
passmass [ host1 host2 host3 ... ]
INTRODUCTION
Passmass changes a password on multiple machines. If you
have accounts on several machines that do not share password
databases, Passmass can help you keep them all in sync.
This, in turn, will make it easier to change them more fre-
quently.
When Passmass runs, it asks you for the old and new pass-
words. (If you are changing root passwords and have equiva-
lencing, the old password is not used and may be omitted.)
Passmass understands the "usual" conventions. Additional
arguments may be used for tuning. They affect all hosts
which follow until another argument overrides it. For exam-
ple, if you are known as "libes" on host1 and host2, but
"don" on host3, you would say:
passmass host1 host2 -user don host3
Arguments are:
-user
User whose password will be changed. By default,
the current user is used.
-rlogin
Use rlogin to access host. (default)
-slogin
Use slogin to access host.
-ssh
Use ssh to access host.
-telnet
Use telnet to access host.
-program
Next argument is a program to run to set the pass-
word. Default is "passwd". Other common choices
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User Commands PASSMASS(1)
are "yppasswd" and "set passwd" (e.g., VMS hosts).
A program name such as "password fred" can be used
to create entries for new accounts (when run as
root).
-prompt
Next argument is a prompt suffix pattern. This
allows the script to know when the shell is prompt-
ing. The default is "# " for root and "% " for
non-root accounts.
-timeout
Next argument is the number of seconds to wait for
responses. Default is 30 but some systems can be
much slower logging in.
-su Next argument is 1 or 0. If 1, you are addition-
ally prompted for a root password which is used to
su after logging in. root's password is changed
rather than the user's. This is useful for hosts
which do not allow root to log in.
HOW TO USE
The best way to run Passmass is to put the command in a one-
line shell script or alias. Whenever you get a new account
on a new machine, add the appropriate arguments to the com-
mand. Then run it whenever you want to change your pass-
words on all the hosts.
CAVEATS
Using the same password on multiple hosts carries risks. In
particular, if the password can be stolen, then all of your
accounts are at risk. Thus, you should not use Passmass in
situations where your password is visible, such as across a
network which hackers are known to eavesdrop.
On the other hand, if you have enough accounts with differ-
ent passwords, you may end up writing them down somewhere -
and that can be a security problem. Funny story: my college
roommate had an 11"x13" piece of paper on which he had
listed accounts and passwords all across the Internet. This
was several years worth of careful work and he carried it
with him everywhere he went. Well one day, he forgot to
remove it from his jeans, and we found a perfectly blank
sheet of paper when we took out the wash the following day!
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User Commands PASSMASS(1)
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
attributes:
+---------------+------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+------------------+
|Availability | shell/expect |
+---------------+------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+------------------+
SEE ALSO
"Exploring Expect: A Tcl-Based Toolkit for Automating Inter-
active Programs" by Don Libes, O'Reilly and Associates, Jan-
uary 1995.
AUTHOR
Don Libes, National Institute of Standards and Technology
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from http://source-
forge.net/projects/expect/files/Expect/5.45/expect5.45.tar.gz/down-
load
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://expect.nist.gov/.
SunOS 5.11 Last change: 7 October 1993 3