/etc/shadow is foobar

[blarson]

So I was adding a few users yesterday with useradd... I think I used the -p flag to give them a default password.

Someone complains that they can't log on, so I try my user account, and it can't log on either. Root is still ok (phew!) so I go in and look at /etc/passwd... looks good. /etc/shadow: all the users have their password set to the default password, not encrypted at all. WHAT DID I DO?!?

any reason why useradd would change the password for all users? Maybe I should just add users by hand from now on.

[DeKoder]

you did a "-p cleartextpassword" :P the -p switch on "useradd" is followed by the *hashed* password, not a clear text one...which made its way into /etc/shadow when that file is supposed to contain the hashed passwords :)
So, i recommend you to useradd without the -p switch, and then do a `passwd username.just.created` and set the password! Or you could also use the output of crypt() function on a C program or perl script...it's up to you!
Cyaz

DeKoder