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From: greywolf@unisoft.UUCP (The Grey Wolf @ ext 165)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Passwords in /etc/group
Message-ID: <462@unisoft.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-Jul-87 21:19:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: unisoft.462
Posted: Tue Jul 21 21:19:07 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 24-Jul-87 03:34:14 EDT
References: <5740010@hpfcdc.HP.COM> <207@macom1.UUCP> <3671@cisunx.UUCP> <2812@ncoast.UUCP>
Reply-To: greywolf@unisoft.UUCP (The Grey Wolf @ ext 165)
Organization: UniSoft Systems; Berkeley, CA
Lines: 38

In article <2812@ncoast.UUCP> allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery) writes:
>As quoted from <3671@cisunx.UUCP> by nk233514@cisunx.UUCP (Deus):
>+---------------
>| In article <207@macom1.UUCP> michael@macom1.UUCP (Michael Mullins) writes:
>| >Once the password is assigned, I "vi /etc/passwd" and yank the password 
>| One thing I'd like to pas along i to use vipw, not vi, to edit the passwd
>| file.
>+---------------
>
>BSD has "vipw".  Sys3, SysV, Xenix, etc. DON'T.  (Someone want to come up
>with a PD version? --mailed to security@rutgers rather than posted, perhaps.
>It does decrypt passwords, I believe?)

--------

I don't know of a routine that decrypts passwords, as such a routine would
be considered dangerous to system security.

	All vipw does is provide a locking mechanism of a very primitive
nature so that nobody can run a passwd/chfn/chsh while vipw is in effect.
The same is true of each of those programs...if one is writing to the passwd
file, another will print the message "progname: passwd temp file busy."

	Hope that helped...

			The Grey Wolf
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