On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 23:24 +0800, Feizhou wrote:
There is this * in the password field of the shadow file for certain accounts.
I know that the ! is to indicate a locked account but what does a * mean?
My understanding is that anything in that field that is not a valid encrypted password means the account is disabled. I believe that '!!' and '*' are simply 2 different conventions indicating the same thing.
Sigh. Documentation a bit wanting now is it not?
Even google does not give me anything...all I found where references to pam(7) to determine what happens but there is not any pam(7) man page.
There is a minimum number of characters (13?) that can possibly be an encrypted password and its salt. Anything less than that is locked out automatically since a match is impossible - it doesn't take a special case or convention.