determiniting if a system is actually using shadow passwords

[doug reeder]

The existence of an /etc/shadow file suggests that at some point,
somebody or something was trying to use shadow passwords on a machine,
but how do I tell if PAM, NIS and all that are _actually_ using shadow
passwords? The PAM docs say they handle it automatically, and I know
about the paradigm problem with using shadow passwords and NIS --
I need to know if the password-checking routines are reading /etc/shadow
instead of /etc/password.

--
P. Douglas Reeder Lecturer, Dept. Computer/Info. Science, Ohio State Univ.
ree...@cis.ohio-state.edu http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~reeder/reeder.html
GE/S d+ s+:- a C+@$ UH+ P+ L E W++ N+ o? K? w !O M+ V PS+() PE Y+ PGP- t 5+ !X
R>+ tv+ b+++>$ DI+ D- G e+++ h r+>+++ y+>++

[Floyd Davidson]

ree...@cis.ohio-state.edu (doug reeder) wrote:
>The existence of an /etc/shadow file suggests that at some point,
>somebody or something was trying to use shadow passwords on a machine,
>but how do I tell if PAM, NIS and all that are _actually_ using shadow
>passwords? The PAM docs say they handle it automatically, and I know
>about the paradigm problem with using shadow passwords and NIS --
>I need to know if the password-checking routines are reading /etc/shadow
>instead of /etc/password.

Look in /etc/passwd, and if all the "passwords" are 'x', then the
real passwords are in /etc/shadow.

--
Floyd L. Davidson <http://www.ptialaska.net/~floyd>
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) fl...@barrow.com