Quoting John Hupp:

> I was finally able to return to this.
>
> Lance Levsen was the first to reply to my question, and indicated  
> the general approach thus:
>
>    What about a passwordless login setup in the chroot for root. Then
>    just a bash for loop?
>
>    $> for i in LIST; do ssh -l root $i shutdown -h now; done
>
>    where LIST is a list of hosts?
>
> RĂ¼diger Kupper and David Burgess followed as below.  But I am stuck  
> at the "passwordless login setup in the chroot for root."  Following  
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo, I enabled the root  
> account (on the LTSP host and in the client image), but a password  
> was required.
>
> I read in  
> http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man5/passwd.5.htmlthat if  
> /etc/passwd has an "x" in the password field for the user of  
> interest (and it does indeed for root), then the actual password  
> hash will be located in /etc/shadow, but that file does not exist.   
> I was imagining that I might delete the field in shadow to arrive at  
> a no-password state.

Rather than poke around in /etc/shadow and risk locking yourself out  
by changing something other than the password hash there is a command  
to replace a password with a "no password" password, but be warned:

(a) it is a horrific security hole to have the root user which does  
not require a password

(b) only root may invoke it - not even may a user (other than root)  
invoke it for itself!

(c) I have only used it in a straight forward configuration, i.e. not  
in ltsp thin clients! So there is no guarantee what may ensue. Some  
way toward guarding against undesirable conditions (e.g. one attempts  
to login, there ensues an insistence to give a password, but there is  
no valid password and a simple press of the enter-key is not accepted  
either!) is to open a second console login as root there also (before  
"blanking the password) from which one may recreate some root password  
in case things go pear shaped.

Ok, with those caveats out of the way the command (as root) is

      passwd -d root

Also if desired (only root may do it)

      passwd -d user

<snip all the rest>

Richard

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