Root password restrictions

[flu at cfl.rr.com]

Maybe I'll take a look at the installer source and track it down...
Thanks for the input though Matt!

Dahlgren

----- Original Message -----
From: Matthew Dillon <dillon at apollo.backplane.com>
Date: Saturday, May 12, 2007 6:25 pm
Subject: Re: Root password restrictions

> 
> :Greetings all,
> :
> :	I've noticed that the root account password (according to the
> :installer) cannot contain punctuation; why is this? A major part 
> of creating
> :good passwords is the use of punctuation and special characters. 
> Are there
> :plans to reverse this or was this an intentional design decision?
> :
> :Regards,
> :
> :Ronald E Dahlgren
> 
>    I think that's a quirk of the installer.  The normal passwd 
> command    doesn't have such restrictions.
> 
>    But you don't have to set a root password in the installer at all.
>    In fact, you generally do not have to set a root password, ever.
>    Root logins are disallowed by default so the only way to get to
>    root is to su from another account.  These days people almost 
> never    assign passwords to accounts and instead use SSH for all 
> remote    access, including access to the root account by changing the
>    PermitRootLogin declaration in /etc/ssh/sshd_config to 'without-
> password'    (which basically means: only via authenticated public 
> keys).
>                                	-Matt
>                                	Matthew Dillon 
>                                	<dillon at backplane.com>
>