CentOS - Jan 2009 - Generating password string in /var/nis/passwd with Perl

Hello,

in our network we have AD (Win 2003) for user authentication
under Windows and NIS (CentOS 5.2) for same under Linux:

# rpm -qf /var/yp
filesystem-2.4.0-1.el5.centos
ypbind-1.19-8.el5
yp-tools-2.9-0.1
ypserv-2.19-3

I have written a CGI Script to add new users both to AD and
NIS and also to create the home dirs at our NetApp-Filer.
Unfortunately some steps still have to be made by hand
(the sysadmin copy-pastes it from a browser to a shell).

I could skip one manual step (calling yppasswd) if I knew
how to generate the passwd string for /var/nis/passwd:

farber:oav3dV4.Mnj/.:10154153:5725:Alexander
Farber,jn-05/02,,,,:/home/farber:/bin/bash

Has anybody already figured out, how to do it from Perl?
I'm sure there must be some way (smth. with Perl's crypt).

Regards
Alex

PS: Here is my script: http://pastebin.com/m46057a70
       feel free to modify and use

On Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 05:11:27PM +0100, Alexander Farber wrote:
> I could skip one manual step (calling yppasswd) if I knew
> how to generate the passwd string for /var/nis/passwd:
> 
> farber:oav3dV4.Mnj/.:10154153:5725:Alexander
> Has anybody already figured out, how to do it from Perl?
crypt is the function to call.

eg
  print crypt("hello","ab")
  abl0JrMf6tlhw

The "ab" is the salt and should be chose from [a-zA-Z0-9./]

"man 3 crypt" for the C version, which the perl version mimics


-- 

rgds
Stephen