Can I change a user password in Linux from the command line with no interactivity?

Solution 1:

You could use chpasswd.

echo user:pass | /usr/sbin/chpasswd

Solution 2:

You can use usermod with the -p option to provide a password hash (not the actual password). You can generate the password hash using something like mkpasswd -m sha-256 or mkpasswd -m md5

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Solution 3:

Sure.

1. Hash the password on your local system.
2. Connect to the remote machine (where you want to change the password)
3. Feed the hashed password & the username to a creative sed script that updates your system's password file (/etc/shadow, /etc/master.passwd, whatever it happens to be).