I know this sounds like a stupid idea, but because of the situation that this computer is used, it can't have a user password. How do I get rid of it?
-Cliff

Yes this is a stupid idea.

You should be able to set it to login automatically. You would be better off to just boot to it, log in and leave the bugger run from then on.

Doing away with the password is going, sooner or later, to bring the OS to its knees as someone makes a mistake that the password would stop.

This is Linux, you can remove the kernel or any system file, if they are not password protected something like that will happen in time.

If others are using this box you would be better off to have a second user with very limited permissions and log in as that and then let them at it with out too much worry. You could with that second user leave the user name and password with the box. As long as others do not have "sudo" permissions (not members of the sudoers group) you should not have problems and the box could be shut down without you having to be there to reboot it. That second user could be auto logged in even.

Leave the main user the only one with admin permissions with a different and secure password.

Well, you can't -- at least not with the passwd utility and /etc/passwd.

What you can do, however, is have a remote machine connect with ssh where, on your machine, you have hit the return key for the prompts for a passphrase (using ssh-keygen) then copying the ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub file to the remote machine's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. While you're at it, you want to copy the remote machine's id_rsa.pub file to "this" machine's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file (so, yeah, you have to run ssh-keygen on that box too).

That will allow the remote machine to simply
and the user will be connected without a password prompt (and, as a bonus, it's a secure connection).

And, if for some reason you can't use ssh from the remote box... well, you're kinda stuck.

Hope this helps some.

Well, I have it set to log in automatically, but I want to get rid of the password prompt to do something. For example a "Authentication Required" message.

Well in that case just log in as root and you can destroy what ever you want.

NB: For empty passwords some PAM modules need the option nullok afair.

@Reuti, could you explain a little more in depth?

@widget, what do I need to delete to remove the password?

Can't you just set the password to something easy that each user can remember? For example, "1234" or "user" or "whatever".
Note that using weak passwords is a security risk in itself; but it is probably better than no password at all.

Please check man pam_unix2 and man pam_pwcheck for nullok. My experience was, that you need a line like:for the auth service, despite the fact that the man page states it’s only about changing passwords to an empty one.

Sorry, I'm kinda new to linux, could you do a step-by-step instructions of how to do this?
Thanks, Cliff

What did you try so far?

I've tried doing it through the Ubuntu user manager, but that's not working. I'm really pretty new to using the linux terminal, so I'm not really sure on what to do with your previous post, could you explain step-by-step? Thank you.
-Cliff