11 Jan
1999
11 Jan
'99
12:45 p.m.
Bill Pechter <pechter(a)monmouth.com> wrote:
With straight flat password files, two sysadmins can
both make changes
at the same time and the last one to write the file is the person
who's changes take effect. Not too predictable on a large site.
The BIG problem that inspired password file locking wasn't the two
sysadmin problem, it was that any random user could run 'passwd' at any
time to change their own password, and if the sysadmin was editing the
file at the time...
So password locking had to be built into 'passwd', and a way for the
sysadmin to lock the file during editing also had to be provided.