Re: encrypting passwords for rootpw

["Cipriano Groenendal" <cipri campai nl>]

> > THIS IS A BADLY WRITTEN SCRIPT. It gets the job done, but you must be
> > careful to generate the random salt properly, take care to prevent other
> > users seeing the plaintext password in the output of ps, and take care
> > to prevent the passwords you use ending up in shell history files. I
> > might write a better version and post it later.
> What is the meaning of salt. I am confused.
> Where can I get more info on "salt"
Take a look at `man 3 crypt` for more information on crypt and salts. From the man page:
   salt is a two-character string chosen from the set [a-zA-Z0-9./].  This string is used to perturb the algorithm
   in one of 4096 different ways.

Also an important note that'll save you some headaches:

 If the salt starts with $1$ an MD5 based password 
 hashing algorithm is applied. The salt should consist 
 off $1$ followed with eight characters.

So if you use --enablemd5 your salt /must/ start with $1$ or your system will be unusable.

Cipri