Michael Kjorling wrote: > The given password is encrypted, and then compared to whatever is in > the password field in /etc/shadow (or /etc/passwd). If they match, the > password is valid. So entering anything that cannot be valid into the > password field means that no password will be valid. > > Whether you choose to use x, !, !!, * or some other variant is up to > you. Yes, "x" works in this case too since it is too short to be a > salt followed by an encrypted password. I don't mean to be rude or anything, but I've seen many answers like this on different mailinglist archives and everyone seems to have an opinion of their own regarding this. So I'd like to see documentation of some sort.
Example where ! is different from *: http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2005/03/msg04197.html My original interest for this was sparked from gentoo.forums.org, where som people write that changing ! into * in /etc/shadow helped them solve problems with freenx. Which implies that * and ! does not mean the same. This is why I'd like to find some kind of more less official documentation. -- [email protected] mailing list
