Red Hat® Linux® 7 Unleashed

Passwords—A Second Look

The system stores the user's encrypted password in the /etc/passwd file. If the system is using a shadow password system, the value placed in this field is x. A value of * blocks login access to the account, as * is not a valid character for an encrypted field. This field should never be edited by hand (after it is set up). Instead, a program such as passwd should be used so that proper encryption takes place. If this field is changed, the old password is no longer valid and more than likely will have to be changed by root.

Note

If the system is using a shadow password system, a separate file, /etc/shadow, contains passwords (encrypted, of course).

A password should be set up by the user and known only by the user. The ...