At 10:41 AM 2/11/98 -0500, Nathan J. Mehl wrote:
>In the immortal words of Marilyn Davis (marilyn@deliberate.com):
>>
>> Norbert Bollow taught us about the '*' in the encrypted password field
>> of the password file producing a new user that only root can access.
>> This is just what we need and solves all arguments. There is no
>> reason to chose a priority.
>>
>> Is part of Linux security *not* to document such an excellent security
>> feature? :^)
>
>*choke*
>
>Try "man passwd". Oh hell, here's the relevant excerpt:
>
> Passwd is an ASCII file which contains a list of the sys-
> tem's users and the passwords they must use for access.
> The password file should have read access for everyone,
> which is ok because of the encryption, but write access
> only for the superuser. If you create a new login, leave
> the password field empty and use passwd(1) to fill it. A
> star or something like that in the password field means,
> that this user can not login via login(1).
>
>Now, admittedly, there's nothing in, say, the RedHat Users Guide
>that jumps up and says "hey! here's how to make a null user!"
>but then again it's sort of obvious from looking at the passwd
>file itself...
>
Thank you so much Nathan for this contribution, and for your kind help, I
just wish all system administrators could be as understanding and
sympathetic as you when they pass on knowledge that others do not have. May
I keep your email address as future reference, after all it is my intention
to try and install Linux in a couple of weeks, I'm sure you won't hesitate
to help me if I get into difficulties :)
John
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