From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Mar 16 8:43:15 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com (cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com [24.2.89.207]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 520DD37BC05 for ; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 08:43:07 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com) Received: (from cjc@localhost) by cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id LAA63052; Thu, 16 Mar 2000 11:42:36 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from cjc) Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2000 11:42:36 -0500 From: "Crist J. Clark" To: Brent Kearney Cc: FreeBSD Questions Subject: Re: password length Message-ID: <20000316114236.F62772@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com> Reply-To: cjclark@home.com References: <20000315220519.A37016@kearneys.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: <20000315220519.A37016@kearneys.ca>; from brent@kearneys.ca on Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 10:05:19PM -0800 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 10:05:19PM -0800, Brent Kearney wrote: > > The man page for `passwd' states that, regarding the length of a > password, "Its total length must be less than _PASSWORD_LEN (currently > 128 characters)." > > It appears to be true, as when you use 'passwd' to change your > password, you can enter a long password, and it properly veryfies that > you re-enter the same long password. > > However, you only need to type the first 8 chars of the password to > authenticate afterwards. Is there any way to fix this? > > I'm using FreeBSD 3.4-STABLE. Not if you are using DES passwords. Only the first eight characters of DES passwords are significant. This is how DES works and not a bug or misfeature in FreeBSD. You would (should) get the same results on any system using DES passwords. There is one "fix" though, MD5 passwords will use arbitrarily many characters (if not for the 128 limit you quote). -- Crist J. Clark cjclark@home.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message