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Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:29:15 -0500
From: Dan Nelson <dnelson@allantgroup.com>
To: Paul Hoffman <phoffman@proper.com>
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References: <p06230928bf50f5540441@[10.20.30.249]>
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X-OS: FreeBSD 5.4-STABLE
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Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: What does an * in master.passwd (not passwd) mean?
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In the last episode (Sep 16), Paul Hoffman said:
> In 5.4 (and probably lots of other versions), the master.passwd file
> is pre-seeded with lots of accounts such as daemon, operator, and so
> on. The master.passwd file looks like:
> 
> daemon:*:1:1::0:0:Owner of many system processes:/root:/usr/sbin/nologin
> operator:*:2:5::0:0:System &:/:/usr/sbin/nologin
> . . .
> 
> The man page for master.passwd and passwd say what an "*" in the
> second field means in passwd, but not in master.passwd. Any clues
> would be appreciated (and I will put in a documentation pr when I
> have an answer).

It's an invalid password hash, so the user can't log in.  Anything that
doesn't match DES or md5 password hash output would do.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson@allantgroup.com