[Pkg-shadow-devel] dpasswd and mkpasswd

[robert song]

hello,Nekral
Thank you for your detailed reply.
Now I know I don't need these commands. :)

2007/11/19, Nicolas François <nicolas.francois at centraliens.net>:
> On Mon, Nov 19, 2007 at 02:29:56PM +0900, robertsong.linux at gmail.com wrote:
> > hello, everyone.
> > When I updated the shadow from 20000902 to shadow-4.0.18,
>
> Welcome to the new millennium ;)
>
> > I found the two commands had been deleted.
> > Their descriptions are as bellow:
> > dpasswd - change dialup password
> > mkpasswd - Update passwd and group database files
> > I could only find the information from the NEWS that just said
> > they are deleted, but I don't know the exact reason, and
> > I could not find some other information.
> > Could someone explain it to me ?
>
> First, the facts:
>  * The dialout functionality of login has been removed in 2003. Hence,
>    dpasswd was no more needed.
>
>  * The NDBM functionality was removed in 2005 from all the shadow utilities.
>    mkpasswd was removed shortly after.
>
> I think these functionalities were removed because nobody use them:
>  * The dialout password was replaced by better authentication protocols
>    (e.g. ssh), which avoid the clear-text transmission of passwords.
>  * I don't exactly know what mkpasswd was used for, but I think it was
>    related to NIS, and NIS now uses a Berkeley DB, no more a NDBM
>    database. The NIS passwords are now handled by the NIS commands (yp
>    IIRC).
>    Note that there are many other utilities named mkpasswd, which are not
>    doing the same thing.
>
> Do you really need these commands?
>
> Best Regards,
> --
> Nekral
>