Hi Jeremy, hi all!

> You are right -- a reboot is not necessary.


Would have been pretty strange for a multiuser system.

> You can check for yourself by looking at the master.password file. You can
> learn about the format by reading the master.passwd man page. Does the
> second field have gibberish or just a "*" (or a plain, readable text)?


Actually the user I created had in "/etc/master.passwd" 13 stars and in
"/etc/passwd" 1 star, like:

master.passwd:
root:<encrypted password>:<8 more fields>
user_name:*************:<8 more fields>

passwd:
root:*:<8 more fields>
user_name:*:<8 more fields>

Ok, I learned that, but I still want to know what do the 13 stars mean?

I actually solved the problem by using "vipw" and deleting the 13 stars for
"user_name", then I was able to login and change the password. After that it
was fine. Anyway, I think this is _not_ the real way to do...

> You do not use "-p" with a plain text password. You must encrypt it
> first.


Ok, I guess this has something to do with the DES algorithm, right?

> For example, if your new users' password is "<do_not_tell_you>" then maybe
> you could use "RKcHgui/G5H6s".


This looks like magic! ;-)

Well, I guess (one more time), that "RKcHgui/G5H6s" is the DES encrypted
"<do_not_tell_you>". Is that correct?

If yes: how did you encrypt it?
If no: what did you do to get this?

--
MfG, Best regards, Tchau!
GP, BP, YIS                                 Bernd
BeLi@aventa.de & BeLi@ScoutNet.de