Re: Master Password

[Ahbaid Gaffoor <ahbaidg guyana net gy>]

At my last job I had this request frequently as the SysAdmin,

under HP-UX logged in as root, I would do the following:

su - ahbaidg

this would log me in as the user ahbaidg using his environment settings, that
way I could read his mail (upon request) without having to modify his
password.

Alternatively, if you really want to play with /etc/passwd,
create a temp user who had a password of say "apples"
the password field would be encrypted...

You would note the user's encrypted password and replace it with the encrypted
version of "apples"

when done put back the user's encrypted password...

I tend to opt for the former method...

hope this helps,

Ahbaid.

Alan Mead wrote:

> At 09:47 PM 4/17/99 -0800, you wrote:
>
> >I am sysadmin of my system.  As root, I can go anywhere I
> >want.  But for some things, I have to be a user.  For instance,
> >I get a call from UserX wanting me to go into his mail and
> >check it out.
>
> Well here's a thought:  back up /etc/passwd, change the user's password to
> a password of your choosing, do whatever, then put /etc/passwd.saved back.
> It would be nice if you could lock /etc/passwd during this time but how
> often do your user's modify their password (I cannot on my ISP).  And if
> you're worried about losing changes, just transfer the user's encrypted
> password back.  I bet you could do this in perl pretty easily.
> ---
> Alan D. Mead  /  Research Scientist  /  adm ipat com
> Institute for Personality and Ability Testing
> 1801 Woodfield Dr  /  Savoy IL 61874 USA
> 217-352-4739 (v)  /  217-352-9674 (f)
>
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