-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

>>>>> "Guenther" == Guenther Grau <s_grau@ira.uka.de> writes:

Guenther> Hi Clarence,
>> I recent change the password of a user with the length of the
>> password > 8 chars (eg. abcdefgh!!). When I login using the changed
>> password user id, I could login with the password (e.g. abcdefgh).
>> Is this a bug of the passwd.  Anyone knows about this.  please
>> advise.

Guenther> No, AFAIK, Unix passwords have been limited in length to
Guenther> eight characters for a long long time. Try the same on any
Guenther> other Unix system.

	Actually, there are several different behaviours here.  I
recently read an FAQ about migrating from a SCO server to BSDI.  One
of the points it made is that you had to go through and truncate all
the password entries to 13 characters --- because extra long passwords
to SCO generate a few more encrypted characters.

	The actual DES algorithm works with blocks of 56 bits.  UN*X
uses this as 8 times 7 bits.  One crypt implementation that I found on
the net summed the characters beyond 8 onto the first 8, then
truncated at 7 bits... and ran the encryption.

Dave.

- -- 
============================================================================
|David Gilbert, PCI, Richmond Hill, Ontario.  | Two things can only be     |
|Mail:      dgilbert@jaywon.pci.on.ca         |  equal if and only if they |
|http://www.pci.on.ca/~dgilbert               |   are precisely opposite.  |
=========================================================GLO================

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.6.3ia
Charset: noconv
Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.4, an Emacs/PGP interface

iQCVAwUBMefqAnMTumDzmHdhAQEykQP8CZzar/BXWoYQ0FRX2mCYcHMjYkBFqZ8a
NpDivqRzqYklP/FgDQr7bj6k/de7uUyislmkqjrYMYpIZXAMlX1IluPJAMMd66cj
fBno8a3hrBJVyaifHY0gHlRfbCiPaZMh1YtQTLqmp32ML0w4r+o2ol4+lmmUjGVb
UsD7ugZDiJA=
=xpfc
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----