Change Passwords with SSH and Expect

A few years ago I was supporting a very diverse environment with Solaris, AIX, and Linux servers; some with password logins, public/private key authentication, and several with SecurID passwords. All accounts were local, passwords expired every three months, and the accounts locked after three failed logins — so you can imagine the mess this created if you didn’t go around every server at least every three months. After I’d accumulated about half a dozen passwords, I wrote an Expect script to login and change my password and wrapped it with a bash script to try every old password I had. Since some servers needed a SecurID number to login, the bash script would pause on those and prompt me for the token before continuing.

Continue reading