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Re: Automatic root password setting



|--==> Paul Millar writes:

  PM> [1  <text/plain; iso-8859-1 (quoted-printable)>]
  PM> Hi all,

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

Did you?

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

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

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

Seems reasonable to me.

  >>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?

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

I'm talking about personal workstation.. I admit  that I always did it
for my personal  machines. Although it doesn't  sound too good I don't
see exactly where it could hurt.

Cheers,

Free




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