From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Feb 2 7:28:59 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from palrel1.hp.com (palrel1.hp.com [156.153.255.242]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7556537B491 for ; Fri, 2 Feb 2001 07:28:41 -0800 (PST) Received: from hpbs5000.boi.hp.com (hpbs5000.boi.hp.com [15.56.8.201]) by palrel1.hp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id C22841331; Fri, 2 Feb 2001 07:28:36 -0800 (PST) Received: from xrosebh3.rsvl.itc.hp.com (xrosebh3.rsvl.itc.hp.com [15.34.240.67]) by hpbs5000.boi.hp.com with ESMTP (8.8.6 (PHNE_17135)/8.8.6 SMKit7.02) id IAA08750; Fri, 2 Feb 2001 08:28:36 -0700 (MST) Received: by xrosebh3.rsvl.itc.hp.com with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) id <1A0MGVB6>; Fri, 2 Feb 2001 07:27:46 -0800 Message-ID: From: "DINKEY,GENE (HP-Loveland,ex1)" To: "'Cliff Sarginson'" , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: RE: UID at login time Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001 07:27:25 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2653.19) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > 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