Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001 07:27:25 -0800 From: "DINKEY,GENE (HP-Loveland,ex1)" <gene_dinkey@hp.com> To: "'Cliff Sarginson'" <cliff@raggedclown.net>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: UID at login time Message-ID: <F341E03C8ED6D311805E00902761278C531555@xfc04.fc.hp.com>
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> This is not the reason for the existance of master.passwd. > It is is security feature, not a backup procedure. > This is an implementation of shadow passwords. The real > ecnrypted passwords are kept in the master.passwd file, which > is only readable by root. > The passwd file is world readable (it has to be) but should > not contain > the encrypted passwords in order to prevent brute force > crackign attempts That may be the case but either way you cannot (in most instances) edit /etc/passwd directly and expect it to do what you want. AFAIK the only "acceptable" method of modifying /etc/passwd is through vipw. As I mentioned earlier - this is to ensure that /etc/passwd and /etc/master.passwd are in sync. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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