Other Help Topics :: setting root passwd for headless system

I am not sure if I'm doing something wrong by digging up this 12 months old thread... But I'm in the exact same possition as the thread starter.

Really unfortunate that --stdin is not available in DSL's passwd.

Have anyone found a solution to this, except remastering DSL?

You could load gnu's version of passwd or use another program to input it for you.

One of the few nits I have to pick with DSL, and one of the issues I address in my my forthcoming hardening guide (I still have some things I want to add to it), is that it uses passwords for SSH. Especially for root. That's one of the reasons I opt for hard drive installs or remasters on anything that touches a network (particularly WiFi). It's irrelevant to me that the heart of of the system is read-only; the rest of it -- meaning my own data -- isn't. Keys are far more secure.

I know your question is about access, not necessarily security, so I'll leave it there and provide a few links until I have time to finish the hardening page.

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/530
http://www.securitydocs.com/library/3385
http://gentoo-wiki.com/SECURITY_SSH_without_a_password

My appologies for my newbieness, but...

GNU's version of passwd? Is this a replacement of the current passwd? I didn't even know there were different versions...

Another application to input it for me? I tried writing a bash script, but I couldn't make it. Does it exist custom programs for this purpose???

Would you be so kind to give me a point in the right direction?

Several programs in DSL are actually part of a program called Busybox, which provides many of the standard Unix tools but in a smaller space. The GNU versions of these tools are typically much larger and have more options available, and are what is usually found in a typical big Linux distro. When you read documentation about these tools (such as man pages), they sometimes include features that are not available in Busybox.
The GNU versions of many of DSL's Busybox commands can be obtained in gnu-utils.dsl, coreutils.uci, and one or two other mydsl packages (mostly in gnu-utils).

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