[vox-tech] password question

[Peter Jay Salzman]

dear all,

i'm writing a shell script to manage user accounts on the cluster.
unfortunately, redhat adduser -p wants an encrypted password, not a
plaintext password.

does anyone know of a utility that generates a shadow/md5 type encrypted
password from plaintext input?

usermod wants a encrypted password too.

alternatively, is there a 'passwd' type utility that can be used from within
a shell script?

thanks!
pete