Re: Another shadow question
On Fri, 10 May 1996, Christian Hudon wrote:
> On Tue, 7 May 1996, David Frey wrote:
>
> > There are far too many conflicting binaries which are replaced by
> > shadow (passwd, login was in miscutils (where is it now?),
> > su is in shellutils, chfn, newgrp (in shellutils), ...)
>
> Ugh. It'd look like it'd be kinda messy. Wouldn't it be better to simply
> change all packages to be shadow-aware (i.e. they use shadow if it's
> there)?
>From my understanding of shadow passwords, it is possible to make
programs work both with and without shadowing. I'm the maintainer of
all the programs mentioned except su. Perhaps, David, you could put
the source somewhere so I and the other affected developers could look
at it?
Is it possible for a system to be switched to or from shadow support,
or must the decision be made on installation? Does your package
include scripts that rewrite passwd into passwd and shadow and
vice-versa? I'm imagining a program, shadowconfig, that could be run
to turn on or off shadow password support. The other programs would
djust based on whether the password was in the passwd struct. Is this
practical?
I don't think it's wise to start a discussion on the merits of password
shadowing, as I'm afraid that it would rapidly deteriorate. Optional
shadow password support, however, would be a big feather in our cap.
Guy
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