I've created a Python script using Fabric to configure a freshly built Slicehost Ubuntu slice. In case you're not familiar with Fabric, it uses Paramiko, a Python SSH2 client, to provide remote access "for application deployment or systems administration tasks."

One of the first things I have the Fabric script do is to create a new admin user and set their password. Unlike Pexpect, Fabric cannot handle interactive commands on the remote system, so I need to set the user's password non-interactively. At present, I'm using the chpasswd command to change the password. This transmits the password as clear text over SSH to the remote system.

Questions

1. Is my current method of setting the password a security concern? Currently, the drawback I see is that Fabric shows the password as clear text on my local system as follows:
   [xxx.xx.xx.xxx] run: echo "johnsmith:supersecretpassw0rd" | chpasswd.
   Since I only run the Fabric script from my laptop, I don't think this is a security issue, but I'm interested in others' input.
2. Is there a better method for setting the user's password non-interactively? Another option, would be to use Pexpect from within the Fabric script to set the password.

Current Code

# Fabric imports and host configuration excluded for brevity
root_password = getpass.getpass("Root's password given by SliceManager: ")
admin_username = prompt("Enter a username for the admin user to create: ")
admin_password = getpass.getpass("Enter a password for the admin user: ")
env.user = 'root'
env.password = root_password
# Create the admin group and add it to the sudoers file
admin_group = 'admin'
run('addgroup {group}'.format(group=admin_group))
run('echo "%{group} ALL=(ALL) ALL" >> /etc/sudoers'.format(
    group=admin_group)
)
# Create the new admin user (default group=username); add to admin group
run('adduser {username} --disabled-password --gecos ""'.format(
    username=admin_username)
)
run('adduser {username} {group}'.format(
    username=admin_username,
    group=admin_group)
)
# Set the password for the new admin user
run('echo "{username}:{password}" | chpasswd'.format(
    username=admin_username,
    password=admin_password)
)

Local System Terminal I/O

$ fab config_rebuilt_slice
Root's password given by SliceManager: 
Enter a username for the admin user to create: johnsmith
Enter a password for the admin user: 
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] run: addgroup admin
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] out: Adding group `admin' (GID 1000) ...
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] out: Done.
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] run: echo "%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL" >> /etc/sudoers
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] run: adduser johnsmith --disabled-password --gecos ""
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] out: Adding user `johnsmith' ...
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] out: Adding new group `johnsmith' (1001) ...
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] out: Adding new user `johnsmith' (1000) with group `johnsmith' ...
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] out: Creating home directory `/home/johnsmith' ...
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] out: Copying files from `/etc/skel' ...
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] run: adduser johnsmith admin
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] out: Adding user `johnsmith' to group `admin' ...
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] out: Adding user johnsmith to group admin
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] out: Done.
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] run: echo "johnsmith:supersecretpassw0rd" | chpasswd
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] run: passwd --lock root
[xxx.xx.xx.xxx] out: passwd: password expiry information changed.

Done.
Disconnecting from [email protected]... done.