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Re: Automatic root password setting



Hi all,

I was going to submit a bug against passwd for this so it doesn't get lost in 
the wash.

On Tuesday 05 October 2004 09:51, Free Ekanayaka wrote:
> what about automatic root pw setting?

(my reading is...)
Currently this doesn't work because passwd deliberately unsets the 
passwd/root-passwd and ...-again keys before trying to obtain them.  This is 
(IMO) correct behaviour -- no system should expect to hold root pw in 
plain-text, so any existing values should be discarded.

An alternative solution is to have a key passwd/root-hash (or some such) that 
the passwd install scripts would use, if its set, so it wouldn't need to ask 
the user for the password.  Probably only a few lines of extra code are 
needed to support this.

Whilst not idea, its about as good as one can make a fully-automatic install.

> Furthermore I'd like to be able to set it to  the same password chosen
> by the user for his personal account. This imply that the user account
> must be set up *before* root password. Is this possible?

AFAIK, there is no restriction on what you choose for your passwords, although 
having the same password for user and root accounts is a Bad Idea.

Cheers,

Paul.

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