Shadow passwords are a method of improving system security by moving the
encrypted passwords (normally found in /etc/passwd)
to /etc/shadow which is readable only by
root. During the installation of Red Hat Linux, you were given the option of setting up
shadow password protection on your system.
The shadow-utils package contains a number of
utilities that support:
Conversion from normal to shadowed passwords and back
(pwconv, pwunconv)
Verification of the password, group, and associated shadow files
(pwck, grpck)
Industry-standard methods of adding, deleting and modifying user
accounts (useradd, usermod,
and userdel)
Industry-standard methods of adding, deleting, and modifying user
groups (groupadd, groupmod,
and groupdel)
Industry-standard method of administering the
/etc/group file (gpasswd)
Please Note
There are some additional points of interest concerning these
utilities:
The utilities will work properly whether shadowing is enabled or
not.
The utilities have been slightly modified to support Red Hat's
user private group scheme. For a description of the
modifications, please see the useradd man
page. For more information on user private groups, please turn
to the section called User Private Groups.
The adduser script has been replaced with a
symlink to /usr/sbin/useradd.
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