You are right, that would do the trick when writing a script. But what I'm actually trying to accomplish is creating user accounts with the configuration manager "salt". In a blog post someone explained how to create users with it and he didn't set a password, so I gave it chance and came across the ssh problem. Am 11.10.2013 10:14, schrieb John R Pierce: > On 10/11/2013 12:27 AM, Michael Schultz wrote: >> Setting a password for that account unlocks it and ssh works as >> expected. I guess I have to work on my account creation routine. > > you might look into mkpasswd, its probably excessively complicated, but > it can set a users password > > # mkpasswd -l 20 xyzzy > zhRovbjh24hcqrg?xqoF > > sets a gnarly 20 character password for the xyzzy user. easy to script. > >