*BSD News Article 50314


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From: nate@elite.net (Nate Lawson)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: npasswd
Date: 5 Sep 1995 14:17:50 -0700
Organization: Elite Networking (Merced, CA)
Lines: 29
Message-ID: <42iepu$693@almond.elite.net>
References: <42d72u$ktg@ussenterprise.ufp.org> <42fapf$7r7@sol.ctr.columbia.edu> <42hfr6$430@gate.sinica.edu.tw>
NNTP-Posting-Host: nate@elite.net

Brian Tao <taob@gate.sinica.edu.tw> wrote:
>In article <42fapf$7r7@sol.ctr.columbia.edu>, Bill Paul <wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu> wrote:
>>
>>Now, if all you want is the part of npasswd that checks for
>>stupid password choices, you might be able to make that part
>>work with FreeBSD's existing passwd program. Other than that,
>>I'd say wait for npasswd 2.0 to come out and try again.
>
>    I posted a query to freebsd-ports and freebsd-security a little
>while back asking if anyone was involved in the npasswd 2.0 beta test
>cycle (since the author is looking for representatives from different
>OS's) and haven't received any replies yet.  This is something I'd
>like to have for FreeBSD, because checking for "bad" passwords when
>the user changes it makes a lot more sense to me than running Crack on
>your master.passwd once a week.

I originally started with npasswd, but it would core dump and didn't seem 
to be easy to port to the 4.4 db passwd system.  Also, I thought that the 
code was a horrible mess.

Instead, try taking the source from /usr/src/usr.bin/passwd and add in 
the cracklib support (coast.cs.purdue.edu:/pub/tools/unix/cracklib* or 
something like that).  The README in the cracklib distribution has a diff 
for passwd that will work.

Cracklib has much more extensive checks than npasswd and I recommend it 
wholeheartedly over the present version of npasswd.

-Nate