[Samba] smbpasswd -a -s /add smbuser via bash script

[Colin E. McDonald]

I have a script that used to work fine under Samba 2.2.7a.
 
I would pass the username and password to smbpasswd -a -s $user $password and it worked fine.
 
Now it isnt working with 3.07. 
 
Has anyone run into this?
 
It looks like I could pass the password variable to the command twice (password entry and confirmation) but i am not sure how to do this via bash (how to make the variable look like it came from stdin.
 
Thanks for any assistance