Viewing /etc/passwd

[mingshun]

Hi,

I'm currently administrating (newbie) one of the machines in my
school. I have created a dummy account for myself and have
looked into /etc/passwd for my own password. However,
whenever I use my password in /etc/passwd to login to my
dummy account, it failed because of wrong password.

Here's snippet of my /etc/passwd:

==
my /etc/passwd:dummy:x:111:111::/home/chroot:/usr/local/bin/jail
==

Question:
Should I type "111:111" or ":x:111:111:" or "x:111:111:" for my
dummy account password?

Thanks

[fancypiper]

For default installations, the passwords aren't in plain text. I vaguely remember something about shadow passwords but my install was a few years ago.

When you created the account, did you set the password?

man passwd
info passwd

Example:[root@fancypiper root]# passwd fancy
Changing password for user fancy
New password:
BAD PASSWORD: it is based on a dictionary word
Retype new password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully

You might wish to bookmark Linux Newbie Administrator Guide (http://sunsite.dk/linux-newbie/)

[mingshun]

Originally posted by fancypiper
For default installations, the passwords aren't in plain text. I vaguely remember something about shadow passwords but my install was a few years ago.

My sentiments exactly ...
What I see is NOT what I get :p

It is important for me to know the password of a new user
because I am supposed to mail to the new user to inform his/her
password.


When you created the account, did you set the password?


At first no. But after trying sometime to search for my password,
I gave up. :p In the end, being root, I set my password.


man passwd
info passwd


I did man -a passwd. In the FILES section, it tells me to look for
/etc/pam.d/passwd. But when I look at it, this is what I get:

==

#%PAM-1.0
auth required /lib/security/pam_stack.so service=system-auth
account required /lib/security/pam_stack.so service=system-auth
password required /lib/security/pam_stack.so service=system-auth

===

I don't see the link in looking the password here. Those *.so are
unknown binaries to me. As for the other passwd manual page,
it tells me to look for /etc/passwd.



You might wish to bookmark Linux Newbie Administrator Guide (http://sunsite.dk/linux-newbie/)

Oh thanks thanks :D

[fancypiper]

I think they might be modules loaded by pam, but I don't know. It's part of the security system of Linux and it works, so I haven't had to fix that (yet).

[baldguy]

The /etc/passwd file doesn't include any passwords in it. The second item delimited by : (colons) is an x. Your encrypted and salted password hash is stored in (probably) /etc/shadow. You can't read the password for this. You have to create a password for each account yourself. They can use the password to log on and change it themselves to something else.

[mingshun]

Originally posted by baldguy
The /etc/passwd file doesn't include any passwords in it. The second item delimited by : (colons) is an x. Your encrypted and salted password hash is stored in (probably) /etc/shadow. You can't read the password for this. You have to create a password for each account yourself. They can use the password to log on and change it themselves to something else.

Oh, no wonder.
By the way, I heard that there is an utility that can help us to create "human readable"(wouldn't include things like zero and "o" for ordinary together) random password. Do you know where can I get such a program?

Thanks