Automatic smbpasswd file generation

[Ole Holm Nielsen]

With Windows 98 and NT SP3 it becomes increasingly important to
support encrypted Windows passwords via the SAMBA smbpasswd file.
However, there is no way to convert the UNIX /etc/passwd file
encrypted passwords to smbpasswd, and it is virtually impossible
to ask all users at a site to come to the sysadmins to type in their
password for generating smbpasswd entries (neither users nor
sysadmins would like such a solution).

Some months ago the SAMBA developers talked about "automatically"
generating smbpasswd entries from the clear-text passwords that
are passed to the SAMBA server today.  After a while, the smbpasswd
file would be complete, and one could then launch a new service
using encrypted passwords without involving the users directly.

This sounds like the right thing to do in preparation for deployment
of Windows 98 (and for the occasional NT workstation :-).  Is this
line of development being pursued, or is it even feasible with the
present SAMBA code ??

Ole H. Nielsen
Department of Physics, Building 307
Technical University of Denmark, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark
E-mail: mailto:Ole.H.Nielsen at fysik.dtu.dk