This is on an ESX 3.x.x box, but you've got a few options.
The first is to use the --stdin option to passwd, e.g.
Code:
# useradd -m -d /home/foo foo
# echo "foo" | passwd --stdin foo
Changing password for user foo.
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
This would require you storing the plain text password in your script. A *much* safer option is to add a user and set the password as you normally would to a standard value, e.g.
Code:
# useradd -m -d /home/tmpuser tmpuser
# passwd tmpuser
...
Now, you can use the encrypted password for this user when creating other accounts, so that all newly created accounts have the same password as "tmpuser", e.g.
Code:
# useradd -m -d /home/newuser -p `awk -vFS=':' '$1 ~ /^tmpuser/ {print $2}' /etc/shadow` newuser
Cheers,
ZB
