Setting up account without a password

Kosmonavt · 2010-10-12 14:54:07

Hi all,

Quite dumb question - how to make an account without a password? Actually, it is needed to do some potentially unpleasant actions within "sandboxed" user, like $ su limited_user -c dangerous_thing without typing password 100500 times a day.

I googled a bit, but only found the following solution:

# useradd -d /some/safe/path -g users -m -s /bin/rsh limited_user       # or whatever parameters needed
# passwd -d limited_user

It works under Debian in VM, but not in Arch (still asked for password). So how can it be achieved here?

karol · 2010-10-12 15:17:18

Edit sudoers and allow that user to execute some / all commands w/o the password.

Kosmonavt · 2010-10-12 15:22:58

Well, I got it. But isn't it strange? Basically, it should work in the way presented (as in Debian).

Beelzebud · 2010-10-12 18:45:09

That's why one is called Debian, and one is called Arch. They aren't the same.

Kosmonavt · 2010-10-12 20:23:15

Okay, but why? It's only because someone want to be "different"? Looks like there's some serious cause.

Again, it's strange when empty password means blocked account, while there are different (also by effect on /etc/shadow) passwd -l and passwd -d. Also using karol's method requires sudo package, which means that some utility-like way is used. At this time it's more logical to move such functionality to standart shadow package, since it doesn't deal with running commands from a different user, but with login in special conditions (without a password).

I just want to know why the things are this way.

grey · 2010-10-12 21:13:45

As far as the login console is concerned, passwd -d make the account passwordless. I.e. you can login from the console without being asked. That makes it even stranger that su behaves differently.

Kosmonavt · 2010-10-13 09:20:34

I checked again in pure terminal without X. If you initially login via limited_user, password isn't really asked. But when you try to login to it from any other non-root user, then password is asked. Which isn't logical from security point of view. I guess that /bin/login may take user properties differently from su. So was Arch version pure upstream (respectively, Debian as usually invented something own)?

Arch Linux

#1 2010-10-12 14:54:07

Setting up account without a password

#2 2010-10-12 15:17:18

Re: Setting up account without a password

#3 2010-10-12 15:22:58

Re: Setting up account without a password

#4 2010-10-12 18:45:09

Re: Setting up account without a password

#5 2010-10-12 20:23:15

Re: Setting up account without a password

#6 2010-10-12 21:13:45

Re: Setting up account without a password

#7 2010-10-13 09:20:34

Re: Setting up account without a password

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