[CentOS] shadow file question

[Les Mikesell]

On Fri, 2006-06-09 at 11:09 -0500, Steve wrote:

> It wouldn't hurt, though, if more projects would take the "Until it's 
> documented, we won't advertise it as a feature" attitude.  I believe 
> that Debian has such a policy about their distro.

That sounds like it would ensure that people know even less about
the feature, are less likely to use it, and much less likely to
reach the point of writing the docs about it.

> Thing is, though, we CentOS users have little right to complain.  Paying 
> RH customers do.  But we can hardly fault Johnny and gang.  We have no 
> recourse but to ask "Why hasn't someone documented XYZ?".  To which the 
> answer is the perenial "Because no one has cared enough to do it.  Hey 
> why don't *you* do it after you get it all figured out?".  Which is 
> always pretty irritating, because it is so true.

The thing you need to remember is that unix, hence linux, is designed
to reuse small tools in many ways, thus reusing any features that
were previously understood and/or documented without starting over.
The minimum size of a working encrypted password entry is really
an attribute of the encryption method, not particularly related to
the way it is used in the shadow file.

-- 
  Les Mikesell
   lesmikesell at gmail.com