yppasswd length limit

[Ian Mortimer]

On Wed, 2005-01-12 at 21:38, zhicheng wang wrote:

> if the passwd is created/changed on the nis server
> using passwd, it is ok and can be very long (up to
> 256char?) and users have to type exactly the correct
> passwd to log in - no longer, no shorter.
> 
> if users change their passwd using yppasswd, the
> passwd is truncated to 8 char and you can type
> anything after the 8th char to log on.

If you have the client hosts set to do md5 encryption and use passwd to
change the password it will create an md5 encrypted password in the nis
database.  yppasswd always seems to create crypt encrypted passwords
(and they can only be 8 characters or less).

If passwd works then you can just disable yppasswd and make your users
use passwd.

However if you have any systems on your network that don't understand
md5 encrypted passwords your users won't be able to authenticate to
those systems after changing their passwords.


-- 
Ian