Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!ames!pacbell!pbhyf!jdp
From: jdp@PacBell.COM (Jerry D. Pierce)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Re: Shadow passwords
Message-ID: <6646@pbhyf.PacBell.COM>
Date: 28 Dec 89 17:42:02 GMT
References: <6637@pbhyf.PacBell.COM> <185@wrdso.ATT.DSO>
Reply-To: jdp@PacBell.COM (Jerry D. Pierce)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Pacific * Bell, San Ramon, CA
Lines: 32

In article <185@wrdso.ATT.DSO> hoffman@wrdso.ATT.DSO (Paul Hoffman) writes:

>See if you have a command "/usr/bin/pwconv".  On Sys V Rel 3.2.1 & 3.2.2 this
>will rebuild your shadow file to match your password file.  The documentation
>warns against directly editing /etc/passwd, but then tells you if you do to
>rerun /etc/pwconv to ensure there is no incompatibility between the two.
>I have been doing this for over a year w/ no trouble.

Great!  I'll use pwconv to keep the files clean and kosher, since I
can't un-do shadow passwords...

>If you decide against shadow, the command "/usr/bin/pwunconv" goes back to 
>having encrypted password info in /etc/passwd.

Unfortunately, I can't find pwuncov in my Interactive package.  Anybody
out there at Interactive care to comment?

>Paul Hoffman

I've received a number of e-mail responses to my query about shadow
passwords, and about half of them have experienced problems running
under shadow passwords.  (Appears that any programs which try to 
access a user password directly from /etc/password don't function
correctly, which does make sense.)
 
Since a number of packages don't support shadow passwording, I think 
that pwunconv SHOULD have been included in the release.  (2.0.2)

Thanks to everyone for the assistance!
 
   Jerry Pierce
   pacbell!pbhyf!jfp