1PASSMASS(1) General Commands Manual PASSMASS(1)
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6 passmass - change password on multiple machines
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9 passmass [ host1 host2 host3 ... ]
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12 Passmass changes a password on multiple machines. If you have accounts
13 on several machines that do not share password databases, Passmass can
14 help you keep them all in sync. This, in turn, will make it easier to
15 change them more frequently.
16 When Passmass runs, it asks you for the old and new passwords. (If you
18 are changing root passwords and have equivalencing, the old password is
19 not used and may be omitted.)
20 Passmass understands the "usual" conventions. Additional arguments may
22 be used for tuning. They affect all hosts which follow until another
23 argument overrides it. For example, if you are known as "libes" on
24 host1 and host2, but "don" on host3, you would say:
25 passmass host1 host2 -user don host3
27 Arguments are:
29 -user
31 User whose password will be changed. By default, the cur‐
32 rent user is used.
33 -rlogin
36 Use rlogin to access host. (default)
37 -slogin
40 Use slogin to access host.
41 -ssh
44 Use ssh to access host.
45 -telnet
48 Use telnet to access host.
49 -program
52 Next argument is a program to run to set the password.
54 Default is "passwd". Other common choices are "yppasswd"
55 and "set passwd" (e.g., VMS hosts). A program name such as
56 "password fred" can be used to create entries for new
57 accounts (when run as root).
58 -prompt
61 Next argument is a prompt suffix pattern. This allows the
62 script to know when the shell is prompting. The default is
63 "# " for root and "% " for non-root accounts.
64 -timeout
67 Next argument is the number of seconds to wait for
68 responses. Default is 30 but some systems can be much
69 slower logging in.
70 -su
73 Next argument is 1 or 0. If 1, you are additionally
75 prompted for a root password which is used to su after log‐
76 ging in. root's password is changed rather than the user's.
77 This is useful for hosts which do not allow root to log in.
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81 The best way to run Passmass is to put the command in a one-line shell
82 script or alias. Whenever you get a new account on a new machine, add
83 the appropriate arguments to the command. Then run it whenever you
84 want to change your passwords on all the hosts.
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88 Using the same password on multiple hosts carries risks. In particu‐
89 lar, if the password can be stolen, then all of your accounts are at
90 risk. Thus, you should not use Passmass in situations where your pass‐
91 word is visible, such as across a network which hackers are known to
92 eavesdrop.
93 On the other hand, if you have enough accounts with different pass‐
95 words, you may end up writing them down somewhere - and that can be a
96 security problem. Funny story: my college roommate had an 11"x13"
97 piece of paper on which he had listed accounts and passwords all across
98 the Internet. This was several years worth of careful work and he car‐
99 ried it with him everywhere he went. Well one day, he forgot to remove
100 it from his jeans, and we found a perfectly blank sheet of paper when
101 we took out the wash the following day!
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104 "Exploring Expect: A Tcl-Based Toolkit for Automating Interactive Pro‐
105 grams" by Don Libes, O'Reilly and Associates, January 1995.
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108 Don Libes, National Institute of Standards and Technology
109 7 October 1993 PASSMASS(1)