From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Aug 29 13:27:41 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from grumpy.dyndns.org (user-24-214-57-209.knology.net [24.214.57.209]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A1E9B37B409 for ; Wed, 29 Aug 2001 13:27:38 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dkelly@grumpy.dyndns.org) Received: (from dkelly@localhost) by grumpy.dyndns.org (8.11.6/8.11.4) id f7TKQw376804; Wed, 29 Aug 2001 15:26:58 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from dkelly) Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 15:26:58 -0500 From: David Kelly To: Noel Fitzpatrick Cc: Andrew Gould , Edwin Groothuis , lucas@slb.to, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Changing shell Message-ID: <20010829152658.A76776@grumpy.dyndns.org> References: <712A2C3F8297CB498D51421F26F7ECAEDA43@ipac01.ipac.local> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <712A2C3F8297CB498D51421F26F7ECAEDA43@ipac01.ipac.local>; from noelfitz@ipac.ie on Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 03:49:13PM +0100 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 03:49:13PM +0100, Noel Fitzpatrick wrote: > > Hey, > > I even go one better and say learn to use pw. Very handy! > Whatever you do don't edit /etc/passwd by hand it will probably work but > your just asking for trouble. Edit /etc/passwd any way you want until you are blue in the face, it won't do anything. /etc/passwd is fake for compatibility with applications which are too stupid to use the well known library routines for user information. About 8 years ago "shadow passwords" was a hot topic and a pain as everyone did it differently and the result was often less secure than the lightly encrypted publicly readable password. FreeBSD implemented the most painless shadow password implementation I've seen. So painless they didn't provide an option to disable it. Every time you change your password or vipw or pw, a totally new /etc/passwd is created out of the real password database. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message