I'm having problems with changing a Linux user's password from python. I've tried so many things, but I couldn't manage to solve the issue, here is the sample of things I've already tried:
sudo_password is the password for sudo, sudo_command is the command I want the system to run,
user is get from a List and is the user who I want to change the password for, and newpass is the pass I want to assign to 'user'
user = list.get(ANCHOR)
sudo_command = 'passwd'
f = open("passwordusu.tmp", "w")
f.write("%s\n%s" % (newpass, newpass))
f.close()
A=os.system('echo -e %s|sudo -S %s < %s %s' % (sudo_password, sudo_command,'passwordusu.tmp', user))
print A
windowpass.destroy()
'A' is the return value for the execution of os.system, in this case 256. I tried also
A=os.system('echo %s|sudo -S %s < %s %s' % (sudo_password, sudo_command,'passwordusu.tmp', user))
but it returns the same error code. I tried several other ways with 'passwd' command, but whithout succes.
With 'chpasswd' command I 've tried this:
user = list.get(ANCHOR)
sudo_command = 'chpasswd'
f = open("passwordusu.tmp", "w")
f.write("%s:%s" % (user, newpass))
f.close()
A=os.system('echo %s|sudo -S %s < %s %s' % (sudo_password, sudo_command,'passwordusu.tmp', user))
print A
windowpass.destroy()
also with:
A=os.system('echo %s|sudo -S %s:%s|%s' % (sudo_password, user, newpass, sudo_command))
@;which returns 32512
A=os.system("echo %s | sudo -S %s < \"%s\"" % (sudo_password, sudo_command, "passwordusu.tmp"))
@;which returns 256
I tried 'mkpasswd' and 'usermod' too like this:
user = list.get(ANCHOR)
sudo_command = 'mkpasswd -m sha-512'
os.system("echo %s | sudo -S %s %s > passwd.tmp" % (sudo_password,sudo_command, newpass))
sudo_command="usermod -p"
f = open('passwd.tmp', 'r')
for line in f.readlines():
newpassencryp=line
f.close()
A=os.system("echo %s | sudo -S %s %s %s" % (sudo_password, sudo_command, newpassencryp, user))
@;which returns 32512
but, if you go to https://www.mkpasswd.net , hash the 'newpass' and substitute for 'newpassencryp', it returns 0 which theoretically means it has gone right, but so far it doesn't changes the password.
I've searched on internet and stackoverflow for this issue or similar and tried what solutions exposed, but again,without success.
I would really apreciate any help, and of course, if you need more info i'll be glad to supply it!
Thanks in advance.
Try using the '--stdin' option to the passwd command in your pipes. To quote from the man page:
--stdin
This option is used to indicate that passwd should read the new
password from standard input, which can be a pipe.
Another option, if your Linux has the usermod command, as root (or via sudo) you can explicitly set the (encrypted) password using the '-p' option.
usermod
-based version:
#!/usr/bin/env python
from crypt import crypt
from getpass import getpass
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
sudo_password_callback = lambda: sudo_password # getpass("[sudo] password: ")
username, username_newpassword = 'testaccount', '$2&J|5ty)*X?9+KqODA)7'
# passwd has no `--stdin` on my system, so `usermod` is used instead
# hash password for `usermod`
try:
hashed = crypt(username_newpassword) # use the strongest available method
except TypeError: # Python < 3.3
p = Popen(["mkpasswd", "-m", "sha-512", "-s"], stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE,
universal_newlines=True)
hashed = p.communicate(username_newpassword)[0][:-1] # chop '\n'
assert p.wait() == 0
assert hashed == crypt(username_newpassword, hashed)
# change password
p = Popen(['sudo', '-S', # read sudo password from the pipe
# XXX: hashed is visible to other users
'usermod', '-p', hashed, username],
stdin=PIPE, universal_newlines=True)
p.communicate(sudo_password_callback() + '\n')
assert p.wait() == 0
I ran accross the same problem today and I wrote a simple wrapper around subprocess
to call the passwd
command and feed stdin
with the new password. This code is not fool proof and only works when running as root which does not prompt for the old password.
import subprocess
from time import sleep
PASSWD_CMD='/usr/bin/passwd'
def set_password(user, password):
cmd = [PASSWD_CMD, user]
p = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdin=subprocess.PIPE)
p.stdin.write(u'%(p)s\n%(p)s\n' % { 'p': password })
p.stdin.flush()
# Give `passwd` cmd 1 second to finish and kill it otherwise.
for x in range(0, 10):
if p.poll() is not None:
break
sleep(0.1)
else:
p.terminate()
sleep(1)
p.kill()
raise RuntimeError('Setting password failed. '
'`passwd` process did not terminate.')
if p.returncode != 0:
raise RuntimeError('`passwd` failed: %d' % p.returncode)
If you need the output of passwd you can also pass stdout=subprocess.PIPE
to the Popen
call and read from it. In my case I was only interested if the operation succeeded or not so I simply skipped that part.
Security consideration: Do not use something like echo -n 'password\npassword\n | passwd username'
as this will make the password visible in the process list.
SUDO
Since you seam to want to be using sudo passwd <username>
I would recommend adding a new line to your /etc/sudoers
(use visudo
for that!)
some_user ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/passwd
Sudo will not ask for the password for some_user
and the script will run as expected.
Alternatively simply add an extra p.stdin.write(u'%s\n' % SUDO_PASSWORD)
line. That way sudo
will receive the user password first and then passwd
receives the new user password.
The user you are running this as must have sudo permission to run the passwd
command without a password.
>>> from subprocess import Popen
>>> proc = Popen(['/usr/bin/sudo', '/usr/bin/passwd', 'test', '--stdin'])
>>> proc.communicate('newpassword')