Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 15:26:58 -0500 From: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> To: Noel Fitzpatrick <noelfitz@ipac.ie> Cc: Andrew Gould <AndrewGould@shannonhealth.org>, Edwin Groothuis <edwin@mavetju.org>, lucas@slb.to, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Changing shell Message-ID: <20010829152658.A76776@grumpy.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: <712A2C3F8297CB498D51421F26F7ECAEDA43@ipac01.ipac.local>; from noelfitz@ipac.ie on Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 03:49:13PM %2B0100 References: <712A2C3F8297CB498D51421F26F7ECAEDA43@ipac01.ipac.local>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
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
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20010829152658.A76776>