How to create encrypted password via command line

[Nigel Wade]

Anne Moore wrote:
> Thanks, Nigel. I'll give it a shot today and see what happens.
> 
> Anne 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com [mailto:redhat-list-bounces at redhat.com]
> On Behalf Of Nigel Wade
> Sent: Friday, September 14, 2007 4:25 AM
> To: General Red Hat Linux discussion list
> Subject: Re: How to create encrypted password via command line
> 
> Anne Moore wrote:
>> <<Has slapd.conf been configured to allow users write permission to 
>> their passwords?>>
>>
>> Hmmm, well good question! I checked through the file but could not 
>> determine what should be enabled for that. Do you know what it would 
>> take to do enable user to have write permission to their passwords?
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
> 
> The specifics are totally dependent on your slapd.conf ACLs. The order of
> the ACLs is highly significant and just inserting a new ACL can render later
> ACLs useless. Getting this one wrong can render your LDAP authentication
> scheme useless, or wide open for anyone to read your entire password
> database.
> 
> What you need is something *like* this, fairly high up in the ACL tree:
> 
> access to dn.subtree="dc=your root" attrs=userPassword
>          by self write
>          by dn="uid=<rootbinddn>,dc=your root" write
>          by anonymous auth
>          by * none
> 
> 
> One way to test it is to try changing a users password using ldappasswd,
> binding as that user with their existing password. ldappasswd is part of the
> openldap-client package.
> 

I should have added to this that there must surely be an ACL of this 
form somewhere in slapd.conf. The "by anonymous auth" part is required 
to allow authentication by binding, which is what nss_ldap does. If you 
can authenticate logins by nss_ldap then I'm pretty sure anonymous auth 
has to be enabled in slapd.conf.

The line:

dn="uid=<rootbinddn>,dc=your root" write

allows root to change a users password using passwd/nss_ldap. The dn is 
what you specified as rootbinddn in /etc/ldap.conf.

-- 
Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
             University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
E-mail :    nmw at ion.le.ac.uk
Phone :     +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555