Re: [Bug-sysutils] passwd-ng: Strange output from --help

[David Weinehall]

On Wed, May 19, 2004 at 04:00:18PM +0200, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote:
>    >    The problem is that it cannot find /etc/shadow and/or
>    >    /etc/gshadow.  These files are a requisite for things to work
>    >    properly.
>    > 
>    > This is only true if and only if you use shadowed passwords.
> 
>    Yes, but that's a default assumption in my code, since if you don't
>    use shadow-passwords, you might as well use password-less
>    accounts...  And you won't be able to have group-administrators,
>    aging-information etc.
> 
> The code should detect if shadowed passwords are used or not, and act
> accordingly.  It shouldn't assume that shadowed, or non-shadowed
> passwords are used.  It is easily checked if shadowed passwords are
> used or not, if the encrypted password is `x', then one can assume
> that shadowed passwords are used.

Feel free to contribute a patch that does this.  My original intent with
passwd-ng (which is 99.999% of the contents of sysutils at the moment)
was to get rid of all legacy crap and have a sane and working system for
user- and groupadministration for Debian GNU/Linux machines.  The goal
has changes somewhat (obviously GNU/Hurd systems lies in the scope as
well), but I personally see no big rush to implement support for
shadow-less systems.

Sure, I could fix this myself, but I prefer to work on things that are
useful...

> And that not using shadowed passwords is the same as using acounts
> without a passwords, well, with all due respect, that is total and
> utter crap.

Depending on your security demands. 56-bit DES with a file to work
against is a sitting duck, especially compare to MD5 without a file
to work against.  Still, the loss of aging-information and
group-administrators are bad enough.


Regards: David Weinehall
-- 
 /) David Weinehall <address@hidden> /) Northern lights wander      (\
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