Managing a user password for linux in puppet

Question

I need to create a test user with a password using puppet.

I\'ve read that puppet cannot manage user passwords in a generic cross-platform way, which is a pity. I am

Answer 1

The sha1 function in puppet is not directly intended for passwd entries, as you figured out. I'd say setting the hash rather than the password is good practice! You are not really supposed to be able to recover a password anyway - you can generate it once, or you can have puppet generate it every time - generating that hash once should be enough IMHO... You can generate a password on Debian/Ubuntu like this:

pwgen -s -1 | mkpasswd -m sha-512 -s

...on CentOS you can use some grub-crypt command instead of mkpasswd...