[CentOS] 6.2 and login.defs
John Doe
jdmls at yahoo.com
Thu Dec 22 14:49:17 UTC 2011
From: Stephen Harris <lists at spuddy.org>
> If you look at "man 3 crypt" you'll see the same function is used
> to generate all the different types of encryption; the difference is
> the "salt" value. When you try to login the system will see (based
> on your shadow entry) what the current password is encrypted with
> and will use the same salt to encrypt your typed-in password.
>
> In this way the password file can contain traditional DES, MD5 and
> SHA512 at the same time (for different users, obviously). So "root"
> could be SHA512, "fred" could be MD5 and "harry" could be
> DES, and
> they'll all work.
>
> login.defs merely defines how _new_ passwords are encrypted (when you run
> the passwd command).
Thanks for the info!
JD
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