I was looking in my /etc/shadow file to see which users had passwords (so I could change them to something more secure, I know some are rubbish at the moment) and now I'm not sure what the password field is signifying.
Most of the non-login 'system' accounts like 'bin' have a password field of '*', but there are a couple ('postgres' and another) which have a password field of '!'. Do both '!' and '*' indicate no password?
On 5/23/05, Chris Green chris@areti.co.uk wrote:
Most of the non-login 'system' accounts like 'bin' have a password field of '*', but there are a couple ('postgres' and another) which have a password field of '!'. Do both '!' and '*' indicate no password?
Those are invalid passwords - it is impossible to type something at the login prompt to produce a crypt or md5 hash match with "*" or "!".
Regards, Tim.
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Chris Green -
Tim Green