From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Sep 20 15: 7:22 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from brutus.converging.net (edtn002029.hs.telusplanet.net [161.184.135.251]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 25D4915139 for ; Mon, 20 Sep 1999 15:07:19 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dtougas@brutus.converging.net) Received: (from dtougas@localhost) by brutus.converging.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) id QAA96247 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Mon, 20 Sep 1999 16:25:35 -0600 (MDT) (envelope-from dtougas) Date: Mon, 20 Sep 1999 16:25:35 -0600 From: Damien Tougas To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: How does this password encryption stuff work? Message-ID: <19990920162535.A96199@converging.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0pre2i Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG I am trying to understand how password encryption works using a tool such as the crypt command. I recently had to put an encrypted password in a config file for a program, and was not sure how exactly to do it. What I ended up doing was temorarily creating a user with the password that I wanted, then copied the encrypted password from master.passwd into the config file, then deleted the user. I know ther is a simpler way to do this, but I do not understand how it works. If I use the crypt program, I am required to put in a key. That means that the encrypted password could be anything, which I suppose is good, but how does the program then compare the password the user enters it with the actual encrypted password, if it does non know what the key is? Probably a very newbie question, but I just don't quite understand. -- Damien Tougas Converging Technology Solutions, Inc. Phone: (780)469-1679 Fax: (780)461-5127 E-mail: dtougas@converging.net http://www.converging.net To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message