password file recovery question

doug_at_allensystemconsultants.com
Date: 08/12/03

  • Next message: Thomas Quinot: "Re: password file recovery question" 
    To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2003 09:00:40 -0700 (PDT)

    I've got a possibly silly question and I believe I have an answer, but
    I want to see if what I think is the answer is feasible.

    I've had to rebuild a mail server from scratch, upgrading from
    4.6-STABLE to 4.8-STABLE in the process. The other mail server had
    crashed, with disk errors so sever it wouldn't fsck clean. I was able
    to get it together enough to pull my configuration files off the old
    server. I was even able to get the master.passwd file off of it.

    When I rebuilt, I added users one at a time, so directories, etc. were
    there. But then I copied the master.passwd file from the previous
    server over the new master.passwd file and most of the passwords were
    scrambled. Is it impossible to use the old master.passwd file when
    picking up the pieces of the old server on the new server? If it
    isn't impossible, under what conditions can one reuse the file
    contents?

    I had all the UID's and GID's identical when I entered users, so that
    isn't the problem. I'm wondering if it's the hashing of the password
    that is the problem? Different system, different key and seed,
    different hash results for the same string of characters, so the
    passwords are scrambled for most users. If I could keep the keys and
    the hashes identical, then the passwords wouldn't get scrambled is one
    idea I've had running around. It wouldn't be an issue, except that I
    have about 1000 users and not all of them are good about getting back
    to me on issues.

    I did notice that if I already have passwords set before I copy the
    master.passwd file over, those users seem to retain the password set
    when I created them with adduser. So my password, another user who
    helps me test, and root weren't scrambled.

    Thanks for any information you may be able to provide.

    Doug Allen

    Doug Allen
    Allen System Consultants
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  • Next message: Thomas Quinot: "Re: password file recovery question"

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