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Date:      Sat, 26 Jan 2002 14:00:24 +1030
From:      Brian Astill <bastill@sa.apana.org.au>
To:        <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: A question from a convert from Windows to FreeBSD
Message-ID:  <02012614002402.01182@BAPhD.gihon.org.au>
In-Reply-To: <02012421455703.07381@proxy.pt.com>
References:  <0ffe01c1a371$661d1b20$6600640a@attbi.com> <02012512323903.01099@BAPhD.gihon.org.au> <02012421455703.07381@proxy.pt.com>

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On Friday 25 January 2002 13:15, Bill Moran wrote:

> From your reaction, I'm guessing you have yet to discover the
> built-in man pages

I had a recent problem of somehow not being able to enter my system as 
user.  I needed to change the me-as-user password and thought I would 
need to know the password FreeBSD was already holding in order to do 
this.  I searched the man pages for passwd ypasswd etc etc, but NOWHERE 
could I find anything that told me how to make the change without 
knowing the existing password.
When I asked on this list, the answer was somewhat embarrassing <blush>.

However, what I am saying is that the simple sentence "passwords can be 
changed by root without knowledge of a users existing password" was 
simply not there on any man page - heaps and heaps of well-written 
detail I did not need, was.

So just RTFM isn't any kind of solution for a newbie, who is likely to 
suffer information overload and STILL not find a solution to his or her 
problem.

> Some
> interesting places to start:
> man man
> man hier
> man security
> man tuning

Will have a look at these.

-- 
Regards,
Brian

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