Re: passwd

[Michael Talbot-Wilson <mike calypso view net au>]

On Fri, 21 Jun 1996, Michael K. Johnson wrote:

> 
> Red Hat Linux uses npasswd, which has lots of nice checking built into
> it.  However, its structure really isn't built around pam...  I am
> thinking of writing a pam-passwd package with the password checking
> libs from npasswd and the password-changing logic from the passwd.c
> distributed with Linux-PAM.  I would distribute it separately from
> Linux-PAM (too huge to include, especially with the dictionaries...)
> as pam-passwd
> 
> Any objections?

Well, I'd like to see a functional comparison between npasswd, passwd+ 
and the passwd in the shadow suite.  The first two seem redundant to 
anyone who uses shadow, at least in shadow distributions that enable 
cracklib by default.  If the shadow passwd is not functionally inferior 
to the others I'd be wondering why you have ignored it when it is so 
widely used.

In other words, we are making a selection here.  Which should it be, and 
why?  Have the alternatives been fairly looked at?