Tagged Questions

2
votes
2answers
62 views

Equivalent of “passwd -sa” in RHEL?

I feel a little silly having to ask this, but: In Solaris you can issue a passwd -sa command which gives you (more or less) the same output as passwd -S userName does, except it prints out the status ...
1
vote
1answer
91 views

How to safely put user typed password into a file?

Is there any way to put the password typed by user into a file (either in Unix or in expect). read -s -p "enter password" input echo $input > file Is the above code safe? I want to use that ...
1
vote
2answers
1k views

Ubuntu password policy

I want to set the system-wide password policy on an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS server. Googling around, a lot of people point to this (very old) document: ...
1
vote
1answer
110 views

How do I keep KDE from asking new users for a password when I use /etc/skel to set up their enviroment?

I made this nice custom KDE setup on Arch Linux with customised settings like desktop background, panel settings, kwin settings, etc. I heard that if you copy all the hidden files from your ...
3
votes
2answers
1k views

How do I set the password of a new user after the account has already been created?

I used the 'useradd' command to create a new account, but I did so without specifying the password. Now, when the user tries to log in, it asks him for a password. If I didn't set it up initially, ...
6
votes
4answers
686 views

Is it possible to change password database file(/etc/passwd) in linux?

Is it possible to change password database file(/etc/passwd) to some other file. How does this authentication mechanism work internally ? Does it depend on pam ?
6
votes
1answer
144 views

Why do we need an expiration period?

Why is there a gap between the expiration of an account and its complete deactivation, when one can no longer log in or change his password when it became expired?
5
votes
3answers
1k views

Getting the password expire time

Let me preface this with: I do NOT have root access available. I recently got locked out of my account because I did not know the password expiration was getting close, then elapsed. I want to add a ...
2
votes
1answer
1k views

How to set a new password from bash?

I'm using busybox with a limited passwd (I don't have --stdin option) and without chpasswd and I need to change the password of an user from bash. Here is my best result: echo newpassword > ...
4
votes
2answers
538 views

Second field in /etc/shadow

If the second field of the /etc/shadow file is set to !!, does it mean that the account is disabled? Or does it mean that the account is active with no password assigned?
9
votes
4answers
8k views

How to check password with Linux?

I want to check, from the linux command line, if a given cleartext password is the same of a crypted password on a /etc/shadow (I need this to authenticate web users. I'm running an embedded linux.) ...
2
votes
4answers
465 views

sudo without password - security? [duplicate]

Possible Duplicate: What specific vulnerabilities am I creating by disabling the sudo password? I'm involved yet again in the old argument on whether sudo without password is secure enough ...
8
votes
2answers
504 views

How do I log into my Linux laptop if I have forgotten both the login and password?

How do I log into my Linux laptop if I have forgotten both the username and password?
5
votes
1answer
289 views

Linux Root Recovery

On Ubuntu 10.10 I can login as root without the root password by replacing ro quiet splash with rw init=/bin/bash. How can I secure my machine and disable this backdoor?
2
votes
1answer
355 views

root password changed automatically

I have my system on dual boot (win7 and RHEL 6). I have 2 user account on RHEL 6. A normal user and a root user. I put passwords of both accounts same. It was working fine from 5 6 days. Yesterday I ...
7
votes
3answers
1k views

Why does my sudo ask for password only once but evaluate thrice?

$ sudo some_command Password: Sorry, try again. Sorry, try again. Sorry, try again. sudo: 3 incorrect password attempts $ This is what my shell prints when I enter a wrong password to a sudoed ...
5
votes
5answers
8k views

Program for decrypt linux shadow file

Is there any program or script available for decrypt Linux shadow file ?
1
vote
1answer
888 views

How to reset Linux root and grub passwords?

If we forget our Linux root password, we can change it by changing grub's boot options. But in this case, we also set a grub password and forgot both passwords. How can we recover both?
4
votes
3answers
187 views

Randomise or shred memory of an application

Is it possible to randomise or shred memory of a particular application just after its life ends, or better, whenever it deallocates some memory? A command-line utility like this would be perfect: ...