Can the PASSWORD in the user-seed.conf file be a hashed representation, or does it need to be specified in the clear?
Answering my own question here ... The ability to specify a hashed password was added in Splunk 7.1.0.
Ref: http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.1.0/Admin/User-seedconf
Answering my own question here ... The ability to specify a hashed password was added in Splunk 7.1.0.
Ref: http://docs.splunk.com/Documentation/Splunk/7.1.0/Admin/User-seedconf
Trying it out on 6.5.3 on Mac, I took the hash of the password I had from the passwd file, and set it into user-seed.conf and removed the passwd file and restarted... the user was then created with the password not as the previous password, but as the hash itself. as a result it seems this is a specified in the clear sort of thing...
Unless someone finds an undocumented option to do otherwise, but thought I would share the attempt.
EDIT: Although it occurs to me, if you already have the hashed version of the password, for the admin account... you probably could just drop the generated $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/passwd file everywhere, (and touch $SPLUNK_HOME/etc/.ui_login while you're at it...)