[Mailman-Developers] Need to reset passwords en masse, pls help

[Hugh Esco]

Hey folks:

I and a cohort wrote a script to facilitate list subscriptions
to multiple lists provided by our campaign.  (for details, check
out: http://cgi.votecobb.org/supporters.cgi?function=subscribe).

As a part of this, my friend developed a perl module which
he describes in the perldoc notes saying: "The MailingList
class is not yet a generic mailing-list subscription engine,
but hopefully it will move in that direction."  It provides
an object oriented methods to subscribe to lists for not just
mailman, but also majordomo, yahoo, sympa, etc.

After collecting the data from our form, the script uses wget
to post web form submissions against the mailman subscription
forms, which generates a confirmation message sent back to
the user.  The script generates a random password for the form,
using a perl script, pw (copyright by University of Illinois)
which generates output looking like:
	Of/QiBDZ OfUmuOXfjg2to

Those first eight letters are the password.  The rest of the
string after the space is an encrypted hash of those first
eight characters.  I wrote a subroutine to generate the
password, using this pw script, which truncates the output
using a substring function to pull those first eight characters.

However, instead of calling the subroutine which returns the
eight characters, I made a shell call directly to the pw script
and used the password+hash string instead.

That setup was used to subscribe over 3,000 folks to various
lists.  Now that space in the middle is giving me fits.
No one can log in or change their password to something that
will permit a login.

I have command line access as root in a BSD jail to this
installation.

I need to know:  is there anyway I can automate the resetting
of every password for every subscriber on this installation,
with the new password sent out in an email to the subscriber,
and causing as little confusion and disruption as possible?

All help is appreciated.

Thanks, 
-- Hugh Esco