Ubuntu – password does not work with useradd -p

adduserpassworduseradd

I am running ubuntu 14.04 LTS. I ran the following command to create a user

$sudo useradd -m -p password1 guest_user

and then tried to switch to the user with 

$su guest_user

But i could not login with password1

Am i missing something? Am i suppose to login with password1 or something else as -p option says in the man page for useradd

 -p, --password PASSWORD
           The encrypted password, as returned by crypt(3). The default is to disable the password.

           Note: This option is not recommended because the password (or encrypted password) will be
           visible by users listing the processes.

           You should make sure the password respects the system's password policy.

The above confuses me because when i type the command

useradd -m -p password1

the password password1 is visible on the command line. How to make it invisible in the above command?

Best Answer

From man useradd :

-p, --password PASSWORD
           The encrypted password, as returned by crypt(3). The default is to disable the password.

As you can see the PASSWORD with -p option is the encrypted password returned by the crypt(3) library function.

If you use -p password1, the system will consider this plain text password1 as the encrypted shadow password entry in /etc/shadow.

The solution is to use the encrypted password here with -p which is unsafe, you should set the password interactively.

For example create the suer first :

sudo useradd -m -s /bin/bash guest_user

Now set the password :

sudo passwd guest_user

Or better use adduser instead :

sudo adduser --gecos '' guest_user
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