Adding new users

I have an FTP server that is running Fedora Core release 6 (Zod)

the problem is I need to create new users and I have root access saved in WinSCP, so I can run useradd or adduser via the fake terminal, but every time I try to use passwd <username> it crashes on me and won't allow me to change or add a password.

my questions are this:

--Is there a place the adduser script stores the default passwords? or what is the default?
--Is there another way I can set passwords for new users?

I don't want to change the root pass because EVERYONE has root access and it's saved in WinSCP (I'm sure you see the problem here...)

I want to create User accounts for each user instead of giving them all blatant root access.

the goal here is to gradually migrate everyone over to their new account and then change the root p/w.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Solution 1:

--Is there a place the adduser script stores the default passwords? or what is the default?

The default password is empty, no password.

--Is there another way I can set passwords for new users?

Yes, You can use the command usermod -p PASSWORD, where PASSWORD is as returned by the crypt command. You need the package mcrypt installed and you can find more information in the man pages for usermod and mcrypt and http://www.ryannitz.org/tech-notes/tag/usermod/.

A search for crypt usermod will return more examples.

It sounds like this server is in a bit of a mess if the passwd command is failing, so good luck user36651.

Solution 2:

You could create new accounts with the same password for all users and then set the passwords to expire immediately for each of these newly created users on the system. This means that the first time these users login they will be forced to change their password. WinSCP supports password change requests so this method should be nearly effortless on the part of the user. You could verify that everyone has logged in and changed their password by checking the last login time for each user or trying to login using each user's default password and verifying that they have changed it.