LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Geoffrey D. Bennett <g@netcraft.com.au>
  To  : phil@mrad.com.au
  Date: Wed, 2 Jul 1997 00:43:55 +0930 (CST)

Re: Security

> I selected shadow passwords when doing the original installation, so I
> can't speak with authority on how easy it is to change.  However one
> problem that I can report is that after setting up X11 for the first
> time on my new box, I could not log on any more (using xlogin), and
> had to go back to using a console login only.  Eventually I tracked
> the problem down to my xdm startup.  It needed to be changed to invoke
> xdm-shadow instead of xdm.  Once I made this change, X11 (xlogin)
> worked again for me.  (I consider this to be a bug in the installation
> process.  Could be just a Debian thing, though!)

It is.  Red Hat does shadow stuff differently.  You don't get the
option of shadow passwords on installation, and you have to run
pwconv5 to convert.  Since Red Hat uses PAM, in general no programs
(login, xdm, imap, su, etc) need to be modified when going to shadow
passwords.

Regards,
-- 
Geoffrey D. Bennett (geoffrey@netcraft.com.au)
Computer Systems Manager, NetCraft Australia
http://www.netcraft.com.au/geoffrey/
Red Hat Linux Resellers: http://www.netcraft.com.au/redhat/