I’m working on our script to change the oracle owner unix account password across our server estate at the moment and it occurred to me it might be worth mentioning the expect utility for anyone who might not have come across it. It allows you to write scripts that automate ssh, ftp, telnet (etc.) sessions. In our case, we have a script to login to each of the servers in turn and change the account password using old and new passwords we supply.
Well worth a look if you haven’t seen it before.