Re: forgot root pass

 "petewh@juno" == petewh@juno com <[email protected]> writes:

  petewh@juno> Hey I forgot my root password (11 chars random numbers
  petewh@juno> and letters) would it be a problem if I erased the
  petewh@juno> password file (what is that file by the way?).  This is
  petewh@juno> my personal desktop computer.  I did not write it down
  petewh@juno> because for about a year I had had it memorized but it
  petewh@juno> seems to have slipped my mind in the last month.

And this mail is for a quick point about the password file. First of
all, tell me you don’t know how to delete your password file without
knowing how to recover from a lost root password on a machine which
you have physical access... Anyway, so yeah, about the password file,
funny thing about it is that on any relatively modern version of UNIX
it doesn’t actually store passwords at all. The password file is a
database mapping your username to your user ID number, primary group
ID number, real name, home directory, and login shell. Your password
can be stored simply encrypted in the password file, but just about
every body has it set up to store the actual password in a separate
file, /etc/shadow. The reason for this is that because of all of the
other information that has been put into the password file, it must be
world readable, and if you could read the encrypted password,
eventually you would be able to decipher it. The shadow file is not
world readable.
-- 
  David D. Smith
A man without doubt is a monster.

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