[CentOS] How to enable SHA1 passwords after migration from OpenSUSE?

Thu Jun 26 12:05:11 UTC 2008
Papalagi Pakeha <papalagi.pakeha at gmail.com>

Hi there!

I have recently migrated my old server from OpenSUSE 10.0 to CentOS 5.
Almost everything works great, except for one thing - user passwords.
In the old system they were in a form:

root:$2a$05$9V.P3/KV2fd0r/O8hs0gNueaidF35edj3DL6skb32qZJNpvwVHiUO:12183:0:99999:7:::

and that format doesn't seem to be understood by CentOS. When I change
the password I get something like:

root:$1$Z0HGYkIb$fbkW0gR6c.k7rENE1NlzE0:14055:0:99999:7:::

Note the encrypted password begins with $2a$... in OpenSUSE while in
CentOS it starts with $1$... CentOS passwords (MD5?) are understood by
OpenSUSE but OpenSUSE passwords (SHA1?) are not understood by CentOS.
Is there any way around that? Perhaps get some PAM module from
OpenSUSE? Or just some setting somewhere? Having to reset passwords
for all my users would be a royal pain.

Thanks!

PaPa