Re: Which password cipher ?

[Andrew Doran <ad%homeworld.netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Wed, Dec 01, 2010 at 09:42:17AM +0000, Julio Merino wrote:

> Which makes me wonder... why do we even *ask* people to choose a
> cypher algorithm during install?

I did it this way to avoid a flame war.  Every keyboard warrior on the
lists was likely to have an opinion.

> Couldn't we, as the developers of
> the system, make a good choice for our users (and let them change it
> after installation if they so wish, just as they can with everything
> else)?  (It just feels stupid that we have a question in sysinst for
> something as trivial as this but we don't have a way to select, e.g.
> which services to enable.)

We discussed at one point adding a nerd mode in sysinst where you get these
choices... The idea was to make it hide the vast majority of questions
that it asks, even partitioning.

> Which are the advantages/disadvantages of every method?  Is it there a
> single algorithm that we could just make the default?  (passwd.conf(5)
> does not answer any of these questions.)

Outside the NetBSD bubble most newly installed systems use MD5.