Using UNIX passwords

[Marek Michalkiewicz]

> (To Marek: I don't know if you're familiar with Samba or if this interests you.
> I just thought it might be useful. Fell free to ask anything to me. :)

Sorry for late reply.  I wouldn't call myself a Samba expert, but I know
what it is :).

> Hasn't anybody tweaked the passwd/useradd/userdel commands so it optionally
> updates the smbpasswd file along with /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow? Hmm, maybe

For adding and deleting users, a program to synchronize /etc/smbpasswd to
existing /etc/passwd file shouldn't be hard to write (or add such option
to smbpasswd).  The hard part is to update the hashed password.

One suggestion is to add an option to smbpasswd that causes it to
accept the plaintext password on stdin.  Now, passwd would create
a pipe, fork, exec "smbpasswd -P username" and send the plaintext
password to smbpasswd through a pipe.  I can add this feature to passwd,
or (even faster) you can send me a patch :).

Marek