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Date:      Thu, 16 Mar 2000 11:42:36 -0500
From:      "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
To:        Brent Kearney <brent@kearneys.ca>
Cc:        FreeBSD Questions <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: password length
Message-ID:  <20000316114236.F62772@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
In-Reply-To: <20000315220519.A37016@kearneys.ca>; from brent@kearneys.ca on Wed, Mar 15, 2000 at 10:05:19PM -0800
References:  <20000315220519.A37016@kearneys.ca>

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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


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