Password echo on non-trusted system

[Dek_1]

Is it possible to turn on the echo from a password change on a non-trusted system ?

We have users who are very worried when nothing appears when they are changing their passwords.
I would like an '*' or even '***' to appear as each character is entered.

[Pedro Cirne]

Hi,

I don't think there is a way to have *** when changing passwords...

Maybe your users should relax by having a cup-of-tea before changing passwords :-))

Enjoy :)

Pedro

[Dek_1]

I like the cup of tea - but I think some of them need a valium ;-0

Thanks for the reply. I suspected that is was the case.

[Jannik]

This perl script will do it in clear text:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use FileHandle;
use strict;

my $PASSWD='/etc/passwd';
my $change=0;

die ("usage: $^X username password\n") unless ($#ARGV == 1);

$SIG{'ALRM'}=$SIG{'HUP'}=
$SIG{'INT'}=$SIG{'QUIT'}=
$SIG{'TERM'}=$SIG{'TSTP'}=
$SIG{'TSTP'}=$SIG{'TTOU'}='IGNORE';

sysopen HANDLE, "$PASSWD.xx", O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_EXCL, 0644
or die("No open: $!");
link "$PASSWD.xx","$PASSWD.x"
or die ("No link: $!");
unlink "$PASSWD.xx" or die ("No unlink: $!");
sysopen PASSWD, "$PASSWD", O_RDONLY|O_EXCL or die ("No RO open: $!");
while () {
chop;
my ($login,$passwd,$uid,$gid,$gcos, $home, $shell)=split /:/;

if($login eq $ARGV[0]) {
srand(time()^($$+($$ <<15 )));
my $salt=pack("cc",65+int(rand(60)),65+int(rand(60)));
$passwd=crypt($ARGV[1],$salt);
$change++;
};

print HANDLE "$login:$passwd:$uid:$gid:$gcos:$home:$shell\n";
}
unlink "$PASSWD.old";
link("$PASSWD","$PASSWD.OLD");
close(HANDLE);
rename "$PASSWD.x","$PASSWD";
close(PASSWD);
print "Changed $change password(s)\n";

[Dek_1]

Thanks for the script. In the circumstances we have I really need to have it done by HPUX directly as I can see the script being a source of problems - non-computer more management.

As I suspect it is not available to us so we will need to teach the users what to expect.

[Pedro Cirne]

Hi Peter,

Give us some points :P

Thks!

Pedro

[Simon Hargrave]

If you are really adamant to please your users in this way, you could write a replacement passwd facility, and plumb this into PAM.

It won't be easy though, especially if you don't know pam.

See "man pam" for a brief overview.

You could even change it to tell the user to get a cup of tea before typing their password ;)

[Dek_1]

Thanks for those who replied. As I said I will just educate my users - and maybe start to brew more cups of tea.

mmmmm Didn't that lead to some problems in the 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe' ? ;-))