root password

[Michael James]

On Tue, 21 Aug 2007 01:52:27 pm Harry L. Lee wrote:
> is this true? I was under the impression there *IS* a root password,
> merely undisclosed (for good reason)

Have a look,
 "cat"  just streams the text to screen,
 shadow is wherre the mangled passwords are kept.

/etc# cat shadow
root:*:13661:0:99999:7:::
daemon:*:13621:0:99999:7:::
bin:*:13621:0:99999:7:::
<snip lots more system entries>
michaelj:$1$JpgK.UA4$DY58WYaT9vH95v2eWsrJJ0:13630:0:99999:7:::
andrew:$2a$10$xAw039kQIMvwYszitMTCgO0keKfGRJ5ced2LA.X4kooE47wlnqacm:13630:0:99999:7:::
<snip more users>
nobody:*:13621:0:99999:7:::

Having the second field a  "*"  means no password yet.

BTW, how do I get Ubuntu to create and allow
 md5 and blowfish encoded passwords?

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