mhjack@tscnet.com
This is the Linux Shadow-Password-HOWTO. This document describes why and how to add shadow password support on a Linux system. Some examples of how to use some of the Shadow Suite's features is also included.
When installing the Shadow Suite and when using many of the utility programs, you must be logged in as root . When installing the Shadow Suite you will be making changes to system software, and it is highly recommended that you make backup copies of programs as indicated. I also recommend that you read and understand all the instructions before you begin.
Additions:
Added a sub-section on why you might not want to install shadow
Added a sub-section on updating the xdm program
Added a section on how to put Shadow Suite features to work
Added a section containing frequently asked questions
Corrections/Updates:
Corrected html references on Sunsite
Corrected section on wu-ftp to reflect adding -lshadow to the Makefile
Corrected minor spelling and verbiage errors
Changed section on wu-ftpd to support ELF
Updated to reflect security problems in various login programs
Updated to recommend the Linux Shadow Suite by Marek Michalkiewicz
The latest released version of this document can always be retrieved by anonymous FTP from:
sunsite.unc.edu
/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/Shadow-Password-HOWTOor:
/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO/other-formats/Shadow-Password-HOWTO{-html.tar,ps,dvi}.gz
or via the World Wide Web from the Linux Documentation Project Web Server
, at page: Shadow-Password-HOWTO
or directly from me,
<mhjack@tscnet.com>
. It will also be posted to the newsgroup:
comp.os.linux.answers
This document is now packaged with the Shadow-YYDDMM packages.
Please send any comments, updates, or suggestions to me: Michael H. Jackson <mhjack@tscnet.com> The sooner I get feedback, the sooner I can update and correct this document. If you find any problems with it, please mail me directly as I very rarely stay up-to-date on the newsgroups.
By default, most current Linux distributions do not contain the Shadow Suite installed. This includes Slackware 2.3, Slackware 3.0, and other popular distributions. One of the reasons for this is that the copyright notices in the original Shadow Suite were not clear on redistribution if a fee was charged. Linux uses a GNU Copyright (sometimes refereed to as a Copyleft) that allows people to package it into a convenient package (like a CD-ROM distribution) and charge a fee for it.
The current maintainer of the Shadow Suite , Marek Michalkiewicz <marekm@i17linuxb.ists.pwr.wroc.pl> received the source code from the original author under a BSD style copyright that allowed redistribution. Now that the copyright issues are resolved, it is expected that future distributions will contain password shadowing by default. Until then, you will need to install it yourself.
If you installed your distribution from a CD-ROM, you may find that, even though the distribution did not have the Shadow Suite installed, some of the files you need to install the Shadow Suite may be on the CD-ROM.
However, Shadow Suite versions 3.3.1, 3.3.1-2, and shadow-mk all have security problems with their login program and several other suid root programs that came with them, and should no longer be used.
All of the necessary files may be obtained via anonymous FTP or through the World Wide Web.
On a Linux system without the
Shadow Suite
installed, user information including passwords is stored in the
/etc/passwd
file. The password is stored in an
encrypted
format. If you ask a cryptography expert, however, he or she will tell you that the password is actually in an
encoded
rather than
encrypted
format because when using crypt(3), the text is set to null and the password is the key. Therefore, from here on, I will use the term
encoded
in this document.
The algorithm used to encode the password field is technically referred to as a one way hash function . This is an algorithm that is easy to compute in one direction, but very difficult to calculate in the reverse direction. More about the actual algorithm used can be found in section 2.4 or your crypt(3) manual page.
When a user picks or is assigned a password, it is encoded with a randomly generated value called the salt . This means that any particular password could be stored in 4096 different ways. The salt value is then stored with the encoded password.
When a user logs in and supplies a password, the salt is first retrieved from the stored encoded password. Then the supplied password is encoded with the salt value, and then compared with the encoded password. If there is a match, then the user is authenticated.
It is computationally difficult (but not impossible) to take a randomly encoded password and recover the original password. However, on any system with more than just a few users, at least some of the passwords will be common words (or simple variations of common words).
System crackers know all this, and will simply encrypt a dictionary of words and common passwords using all possible 4096
salt
values. Then they will compare the encoded passwords in your
/etc/passwd
file with their database. Once they have found a match, they have the password for another account. This is referred to as a
dictionary attack
, and is one of the most common methods for gaining or expanding unauthorized access to a system.
If you think about it, an 8 character password encodes to 4096 * 13 character strings. So a dictionary of say 400,000 common words, names, passwords, and simple variations would easily fit on a 4GB hard drive. The attacker need only sort them, and then check for matches. Since a 4GB hard drive can be had for under $1000.00, this is well within the means of most system crackers.
Also, if a cracker obtains your
/etc/passwd
file first, they only need to encode the dictionary with the
salt
values actually contained in your
/etc/passwd
file. This method is usable by your average teenager with a couple of hundred spare Megabytes and a 486 class computer.
Even without lots of drive space, utilities like crack(1) can usually break at least a couple of passwords on a system with enough users (assuming the users of the system are allowed to pick their own passwords).
The
/etc/passwd
file also contains information like user ID's and group ID's that are used by many system programs. Therefore, the
/etc/passwd
file
must
remain world readable. If you were to change the
/etc/passwd
file so that nobody can read it, the first thing that you would notice is that the
ls -l
command now displays user ID's instead of names!
The
Shadow Suite
solves the problem by relocating the passwords to another file (usually
/etc/shadow
). The
/etc/shadow
file is set so that it cannot be read by just anyone. Only
root
will be able to read and write to the
/etc/shadow
file. Some programs (like xlock) don't need to be able to change passwords, they only need to be able to verify them. These programs can either be run
suid root
or you can set up a group
shadow
that is allowed read only access to the
/etc/shadow
file. Then the program can be run
sgid shadow
.
By moving the passwords to the
/etc/shadow
file, we are effectively keeping the attacker from having access to the encoded passwords with which to perform a
dictionary attack
.
Additionally, the Shadow Suite adds lots of other nice features:
/etc/login.defs
)Installing the Shadow Suite contributes toward a more secure system, but there are many other things that can also be done to improve the security of a Linux system, and there will eventually be a series of Linux Security HOWTO's that will discuss other security measures and related issues.
For current information on other Linux security issues, including warnings on known vulnerabilities see the Linux Security home page.
There are a few circumstances and configurations in which installing the Shadow Suite would NOT be a good idea:
A non-shadowed
/etc/passwd
file has the following format:
username:passwd:UID:GID:full_name:directory:shell
Where:
username
The user (login) name
passwd
The encoded password
UID
Numerical user ID
GID
Numerical default group ID
full_name
The user's full name - Actually this field is called the GECOS (General Electric Comprehensive Operating System) field and can store information other than just the full name. The Shadow commands and manual pages refer to this field as the comment field.
directory
User's home directory (Full pathname)
shell
User's login shell (Full Pathname)
username:Npge08pfz4wuk:503:100:Full Name:/home/username:/bin/sh
Where
Np
is the salt and
ge08pfz4wuk
is the
encoded
password. The encoded salt/password could just as easily have been
kbeMVnZM0oL7I
and the two are exactly the same password. There are 4096 possible encodings for the same password. (The example password in this case is 'password', a really
bad
password).
Once the shadow suite is installed, the
/etc/passwd
file would instead contain:
username:x:503:100:Full Name:/home/username:/bin/sh
The
x
in the second field in this case is now just a place holder. The format of the
/etc/passwd
file really didn't change, it just no longer contains the
encoded
password. This means that any program that reads the
/etc/passwd
file but does not actually need to verify passwords will still operate correctly.
The passwords are now relocated to the shadow file (usually
/etc/shadow
file).
The
/etc/shadow
file contains the following information:
username:passwd:last:may:must:warn:expire:disable:reserved
Where:
username
The User Name
passwd
The Encoded password
last
Days since Jan 1, 1970 that password was last changed
may
Days before password may be changed
must
Days after which password must be changed
warn
Days before password is to expire that user is warned
expire
Days after password expires that account is disabled
disable
Days since Jan 1, 1970 that account is disabled
reserved
A reserved field
username:Npge08pfz4wuk:9479:0:10000::::
From the crypt(3) manual page:
" crypt is the password encryption function. It is based on the Data Encryption Standard algorithm with variations intended (among other things) to discourage use of hardware implementations of a key search.
[The] key is a user's typed password. [The encoded string is all NULLs]
[The] salt is a two-character string chosen from the set [a-zA-Z0-9./]. This string is used to perturb the algorithm in one of 4096 different ways.
By taking the lowest 7 bit[s] of each character of the key, a 56-bit key is obtained. This 56-bit key is used to encrypt repeatedly a constant string (usually a string consisting of all zeros). The returned value points to the encrypted password, a series of 13 printable ASCII characters (the first two characters represent the salt itself). The return value points to static data whose content is overwritten by each call.
Warning:
The key space consists of 2**56 equal 7.2e16 possible values. Exhaustive searches of this key space
are possible
using massively parallel computers. Software, such as
crack(1)
, is available which will search the portion of this key space that is generally used by humans for passwords. Hence, password selection should, at minimum, avoid common words and names. The use of a
passwd(1)
program that checks for crackable passwords during the selection process is recommended.
The DES algorithm itself has a few quirks which make the use of the
crypt(3)
interface a very poor choice for anything other than password authentication. If you are planning on using the
crypt(3)
interface for a cryptography project, don't do it: get a good book on encryption and one of the widely available DES libraries."
Most
Shadow Suites
contain code for doubling the length of the password to 16 characters. Experts in
des
recommend against this, as the encoding is simply applied first to the left half and then to the right half of the longer password. Because of the way
crypt
works, this may make for a
less
secure encoded password then if double length passwords were not used in the first place. Additionally, it is less likely that a user will be able to remember a 16 character password.
There is development work under way that would allow the authentication algorithm to be replaced with something more secure and with support for longer passwords (specifically the MD5 algorithm) and retain compatibility with the
crypt
method.
If you are looking for a good book on encryption, I recommend:
"Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C"
by Bruce Schneier <schneier@chinet.com>
ISBN: 0-471-59756-2
DO NOT USE THE PACKAGES IN THIS SECTION, THEY HAVE SECURITY PROBLEMS
The original
Shadow Suite
was written by
John F. Haugh II
.
There are several versions that have been used on Linux systems:
shadow-3.3.1
is the original.
shadow-3.3.1-2
is Linux specific patch made by Florian La Roche <flla@stud.uni-sb.de>
and contains some further enhancements.
shadow-mk
was specifically packaged for Linux.
The
shadow-mk
package contains the
shadow-3.3.1
package distributed by
John F. Haugh II
with the
shadow-3.3.1-2 patch
installed, a few fixes made by Mohan Kokal <magnus@texas.net>
that make installation a lot easier, a patch by
Joseph R.M. Zbiciak
for
login1.c
(login.secure) that eliminates the -f, -h security holes in /bin/login, and some other miscellaneous patches.
The
shadow.mk
package was the
previously
recommended package, but should be replaced due to a
security problem
with the
login
program.
There are
security problems
with Shadow versions 3.3.1, 3.3.1-2, and shadow-mk involving the
login
program. This
login
bug involves not checking the length of a login name. This causes the buffer to overflow causing crashes or worse. It has been rumored that this buffer overflow can allow someone with an account on the system to use this bug and the shared libraries to gain
root
access. I won't discuss exactly how this is possible because there are a lot of Linux systems that are affected, but systems with these
Shadow Suites
installed, and most pre-ELF distributions
without
the
Shadow Suite
are vulnerable!
For more information on this and other Linux security issues, see the Linux Security home page (Shared Libraries and login Program Vulnerability)
The only recommended
Shadow Suite
is still in BETA testing, however the latest versions are safe in a production environment and don't contain a vulnerable
login
program.
The package uses the following naming convention:
shadow-YYMMDD.tar.gz
where
YYMMDD
is the issue date of the Suite. This version will eventually be Version 3.3.3 when it is released from Beta testing, and is maintained by Marek Michalkiewicz <marekm@i17linuxb.ists.pwr.wroc.pl> . It's available as: shadow-current.tar.gz .
The following mirror sites have also been established:
You should use the currently available version.
You should NOT use a version
older
than
shadow-960129
as they also have the
login
security problem discussed above.
When this document refers to the Shadow Suite I am referring to the this package. It is assumed that this is the package that you are using.
For reference, I used
shadow-960129
to make these installation instructions.
If you were previously using
shadow-mk
, you should upgrade to this version and rebuild everything that you originally compiled.
The Shadow Suite contains replacement programs for:
su, login, passwd, newgrp, chfn, chsh, and id
The package also contains the new programs:
chage, newusers, dpasswd, gpasswd, useradd, userdel, usermod, groupadd, groupdel, groupmod, groups, pwck, grpck, lastlog, pwconv, and pwunconv
Additionally, the library:
libshadow.a
is included for writing and/or compiling programs that need to access user passwords.
Also, manual pages for the programs are also included.
There is also a configuration file for the login program which will be installed as
/etc/login.defs
.
The first step after retrieving the package is unpacking it. The package is in the tar (tape archive) format and compressed using gzip, so first move it to
/usr/src
, then type:
tar -xzvf shadow-current.tar.gz
This will unpack it into the directory:
/usr/src/shadow-YYMMDD
The first thing that you need to do is to copy over the
Makefile
and the
config.h
file:
cd /usr/src/shadow-YYMMDD
cp Makefile.linux Makefile
cp config.h.linux config.h
You should then take a look at the
config.h
file. This file contains definitions for some of the configuration options. If you are using the
recommended
package, I recommend that you disable group shadow support for your first time around.
By default shadowed group passwords are enabled. To disable these edit the
config.h
file, and change the
#define SHADOWGRP
to
#undef SHADOWGRP
. I recommend that you disable them to start with, and then if you really want group passwords and group administrators that you enable it later and recompile. If you leave it enabled, you
must
create the file
/etc/gshadow
.
Enabling the long passwords option is NOT recommended as discussed above.
Do NOT
change the setting:
#undef AUTOSHADOW
The
AUTOSHADOW
option was originally designed so that programs that were shadow ignorant would still function. This sounds good in theory, but does not work correctly. If you enable this option, and the program runs as root, it may call
getpwnam()
as root, and later write the modified entry back to the
/etc/passwd
file (with the
no-longer-shadowed password
). Such programs include chfn and chsh. (You can't get around this by swapping real and effective uid before calling
getpwnam()
because root may use chfn and chsh too.)
The same warning is also valid if you are building libc, it has a
SHADOW_COMPAT
option which does the same thing. It
should NOT
be used! If you start getting encoded passwords back in your
/etc/passwd
file, this is the problem.
If you are using a
libc
version prior to 4.6.27, you will need to make a couple more changes to
config.h
and the
Makefile
. To
config.h
edit and change:
#define HAVE_BASENAME
to:
#undef HAVE_BASENAME
And then in the
Makefile
, change:
SOBJS = smain.o env.o entry.o susetup.o shell.o \
sub.o mail.o motd.o sulog.o age.o tz.o hushed.o
SSRCS = smain.c env.c entry.c setup.c shell.c \
pwent.c sub.c mail.c motd.c sulog.c shadow.c age.c pwpack.c rad64.c \
tz.c hushed.c
SOBJS = smain.o env.o entry.o susetup.o shell.o \
sub.o mail.o motd.o sulog.o age.o tz.o hushed.o basename.o
SSRCS = smain.c env.c entry.c setup.c shell.c \
pwent.c sub.c mail.c motd.c sulog.c shadow.c age.c pwpack.c rad64.c \
tz.c hushed.c basename.c
These changes add the code contained in
basename.c
which is contained in
libc 4.6.27
and later.
It would also be a good idea to track down and make backup copies of the programs that the shadow suite will replace. On a Slackware 3.0 system these are:
The BETA package has a save target in the Makefile, but it's commented out because different distributions place the programs in different places.
You should also make a backup copy of your
/etc/passwd
file, but be careful to name it something else if you place it in the same directory so you don't overwrite the
passwd
command.
You need to be logged as root to do most of the installation .
Run make to compile the executables in the package:
make all
You may see the warning:
rcsid defined but not used
. This is fine, it just happens because the author is using a version control package.
If something goes terribly wrong, it would be handy to have a boot disk. If you have a boot/root combination from your installation, that will work, otherwise see the Bootdisk-HOWTO , which describes how to make a bootable disk.
You should also move the manual pages that are about to be replaced. Even if you are brave enough install the Shadow Suite without making backups, you will still want to remove the old manual pages. The new manual pages won't normally overwrite the old ones because the old ones are probably compressed.
You can use a combination of:
man -aW command
and
locate command
to locate the manual pages that need to be (re)moved. It's generally easier to figure out which are the older pages before you run
make install
.
If you are using the Slackware 3.0 distribution, then the manual pages you want to remove are:
There may also be man pages of the same name in the
/var/man/cat[1-9]
subdirectories that should also be deleted.
You are now ready to type: (do this as root)
make install
This will install the new and replacement programs and fix-up the file permissions. It will also install the man pages.
This also takes care of installing the Shadow Suite include files in the correct places in
/usr/include/shadow
.
Using the BETA package you must manually copy the file
login.defs
to the
/etc
subdirectory and make sure that only
root
can make changes to it.
cp login.defs /etc
chmod 700 /etc/login.defs
This file is the configuration file for the login program. You should review and make changes to this file for your particular system. This is where you decide which tty's root can login from, and set other security policy settings (like password expiration defaults).
The next step is to run
pwconv
. This must also be done as
root
, and is best done from the
/etc
subdirectory:
cd /etc
/usr/sbin/pwconv
pwconv
takes your
/etc/passwd
file and strips out the fields to create two files:
/etc/npasswd
and
/etc/nshadow
.
A
pwunconv
program is also provided if you need to make a normal
/etc/passwd
file out of an
/etc/passwd
and
/etc/shadow
combination.
Now that you have run
pwconv
you have created the files
/etc/npasswd
and
/etc/nshadow
. These need to be copied over to
/etc/passwd
and
/etc/shadow
. We also want to make a backup copy of the original
/etc/passwd
file, and make sure only root can read it. We'll put the backup in root's home directory:
cd /etc
cp passwd ~passwd
chmod 600 ~passwd
mv npasswd passwd
mv nshadow shadow
You should also ensure that the file ownerships and permissions are correct. If you are going to be using
X-Windows
, the
xlock
and
xdm
programs need to be able to read the
shadow
file (but not write it).
There are two ways that this can be done. You can set
xlock
to suid root (
xdm
is usually run as root anyway). Or you can make the
shadow
file owned by
root
with a group of
shadow
, but before you do this, make sure that you have a shadow group (look in
/etc/group
). None of the users on the system should actually be in the shadow group.
chown root.root passwd
chown root.shadow shadow
chmod 0644 passwd
chmod 0640 shadow
Your system now has the password file shadowed. You should now pop over to another virtual terminal and verify that you can login.
Really, do this now!
If you can't, then something is wrong! To get back to a non-shadowed state, do the following the following:
cd /etc
cp ~passwd passwd
chmod 644 passwd
You would then restore the files that you saved earlier to their proper locations.
Even though the shadow suite contains replacement programs for most programs that need to access passwords, there are a few additional programs on most systems that require access to passwords.
If you are running a Debian Distribution (or even if you are not), you can obtain Debian sources for the programs that need to be rebuild from: ftp://ftp.debian.org/debian/stable/source/
The remainder of this section discusses how to upgrade
adduser
,
wu_ftpd
,
ftpd
,
pop3d
,
xlock
,
xdm
and
sudo
so that they support the shadow suite.
See the section Adding Shadow Support to a C program for a discussion on how to put shadow support into any other program that needs it (although the program must then be run SUID root or SGID shadow to be able to actually access the shadow file).
Slackware distributions (and possibly some others) contain a interactive program for adding users called
/sbin/adduser
. A shadow version of this program can be obtained from ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/ system/Admin/accounts/adduser.shadow-1.4.tar.gz
.
I would encourage you to use the programs that are supplied with the
Shadow Suite
(
useradd
,
usermod
, and
userdel
) instead of the slackware
adduser
program. They take a little time to learn how to use, but it's well worth the effort because you have much more control and they perform proper file locking on the
/etc/passwd
and
/etc/shadow
file (
adduser
doesn't).
See the section on Putting the Shadow Suite to use for more information.
But if you gotta have it, here is what you do:
tar -xzvf adduser.shadow-1.4.tar.gz
cd adduser
make clean
make adduser
chmod 700 adduser
cp adduser /sbin
Most Linux systems some with the
wu_ftpd
server. If your distribution does not come with shadow installed, then your
wu_ftpd
will not be compiled for shadow.
wu_ftpd
is launched from
inetd/tcpd
as a
root
process. If you are running an old
wu_ftpd
daemon, you will want to upgrade it anyway because older ones had a bug that would allow the
root
account to be compromised (For more info see the Linux security home page
).
Fortunately, you only need to get the source code and recompile it with shadow enabled.
If you are not running an ELF system, The
wu_ftp
server can be found on Sunsite as wu-ftp-2.4-fixed.tar.gz
Once you retrieve the server, put it in
/usr/src
, then type:
cd /usr/src
tar -xzvf wu-ftpd-2.4-fixed.tar.gz
cd wu-ftpd-2.4-fixed
cp ./src/config/config.lnx.shadow ./src/config/config.lnx
Then edit
./src/makefiles/Makefile.lnx
, and change the line:
LIBES = -lbsd -support
to:
LIBES = -lbsd -support -lshadow
Now you are ready to run the build script and install:
cd /usr/src/wu-ftpd-2.4-fixed
/usr/src/wu-ftp-2.4.fixed/build lnx
cp /usr/sbin/wu.ftpd /usr/sbin/wu.ftpd.old
cp ./bin/ftpd /usr/sbin/wu.ftpd
This uses the Linux shadow configuration file, compiles and installs the server.
On my Slackware 2.3 system I also had to do the following before running
build
:
cd /usr/include/netinet
ln -s in_systm.h in_system.h
cd -
Problems have been reported compiling this package under ELF systems, but the Beta version of the next release works fine. It can be found as wu-ftp-2.4.2-beta-10.tar.gz
Once you retrieve the server, put it in
/usr/src
, then type:
cd /usr/src
tar -xzvf wu-ftpd-2.4.2-beta-9.tar.gz
cd wu-ftpd-beta-9
cd ./src/config
Then edit
config.lnx
, and change:
#undef SHADOW.PASSWORD
to:
#define SHADOW.PASSWORD
Then,
cd ../Makefiles
and edit the file
Makefile.lnx
and change:
LIBES = -lsupport -lbsd # -lshadow
to:
LIBES = -lsupport -lbsd -lshadow
Then build and install:
cd ..
build lnx
cp /usr/sbin/wu.ftpd /usr/sbin/wu.ftpd.old
cp ./bin/ftpd /usr/sbin/wu.ftpd
Note that you should check your
/etc/inetd.conf
file to make sure that this is where your wu.ftpd server really lives. It has been reported that some distributions place the server daemons in different places, and then wu.ftpd in particular may be named something else.
If you are running the standard
ftpd
server, I would recommend that you upgrade to the
wu_ftpd
server. Aside from the known bug discussed above, it's generally thought to be more secure.
If you insist on the standard one, or you need NIS support, Sunsite has ftpd-shadow-nis.tgz
If you need to support the third
Post Office Protocol (POP3)
, you will need to recompile a
pop3d
program.
pop3d
is normally run by
inetd/tcpd
as
root
.
There are two versions available from Sunsite: pop3d-1.00.4.linux.shadow.tar.gz and pop3d+shadow+elf.tar.gz
Both of these are fairly straight forward to install.
If you install the shadow suite, and then run
X Windows System
and lock the screen without upgrading your
xlock
, you will have to use
CNTL-ALT-Fx
to switch to another
tty
, login, and kill the
xlock
process (or use
CNTL-ALT-BS
to kill the X server). Fortunately it's fairly easy to upgrade your
xlock
program.
If you are running XFree86 Versions 3.x.x, you are probably using
xlockmore
(which is a great screen-saver in addition to a lock). This package supports
shadow
with a recompile. If you have an older
xlock
, I recommend that you upgrade to this one.
xlockmore-3.5.tgz
is available at: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/xutils/screensavers/xlockmore-3.7.tgz
Basically, this is what you need to do:
Get the
xlockmore-3.7.tgz
file and put it in
/usr/src
unpack it:
tar -xzvf xlockmore-3.7.tgz
Edit the file:
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config/linux.cf
, and change the line:
#define HasShadowPasswd NO
to
#define HasShadowPasswd YES
Then build the executables:
cd /usr/src/xlockmore
xmkmf
make depend
make
Then move everything into place and update file ownerships and permissions:
cp xlock /usr/X11R6/bin/
cp XLock /var/X11R6/lib/app-defaults/
chown root.shadow /usr/X11R6/bin/xlock
chmod 2755 /usr/X11R6/bin/xlock
chown root.shadow /etc/shadow
chmod 640 /etc/shadow
Your xlock will now work correctly.
xdm
is a program that presents a login screen for X-Windows. Some systems start
xdm
when the system is told to goto a specified run level (see
/etc/inittab
.
With the
Shadow Suite
install,
xdm
will need to be updated. Fortunately it's fairly easy to upgrade your
xdm
program.
xdm.tar.gz
is available at: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/X11/xutils/xdm.tar.gz
Get the
xdm.tar.gz
file and put it in
/usr/src
, then to unpack it:
tar -xzvf xdm.tar.gz
Edit the file:
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/config/linux.cf
, and change the line:
#define HasShadowPasswd NO
to
#define HasShadowPasswd YES
Then build the executables:
cd /usr/src/xdm
xmkmf
make depend
make
Then move everything into place:
cp xdm /usr/X11R6/bin/
xdm
is run as
root
so you don't need to change it file permissions.
The program
sudo
allows a system administrator to let users run programs that would normally require root access. This is handy because it lets the administrator limit access to the root account itself while still allowing users to do things like mounting drives.
sudo
needs to read passwords because it verifies the users password when it's invoked.
sudo
already runs SUID root, so accessing the
/etc/shadow
file is not a problem.
sudo
for the shadow suite, is available as at: ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/system/Admin/sudo-1.2-shadow.tgz
Warning
: When you install
sudo
your
/etc/sudoers
file will be replaced with a default one, so you need to make a backup of it if you have added anything to the default one. (you could also edit the Makefile and remove the line that copies the default file to
/etc
).
The package is already setup for shadow, so all that's required is to recompile the package (put it in
/usr/src
):
cd /usr/src
tar -xzvf sudo-1.2-shadow.tgz
cd sudo-1.2-shadow
make all
make install
The pppd server can be setup to use several types of authentication:
Password Authentication Protocol
(PAP) and
Cryptographic Handshake Authentication Protocol
(CHAP). The pppd server usually reads the password strings that it uses from
/etc/ppp/chap-secrets
and/or
/etc/ppp/pap-secrets
. If you are using this default behavior of pppd, it is not necessary to reinstall pppd.
pppd also allows you to use the
login
parameter (either on the command line, or in the configuration or
options
file). If the
login
option is given, then pppd will use the
/etc/passwd
file for the username and passwords for the
PAP
. This, of course, will no longer work now that our password file is shadowed. For pppd-1.2.1d this requires adding code for shadow support.
The example given in the next section is adding shadow support to
pppd-1.2.1d
(an older version of pppd).
pppd-2.2.0
already contains shadow support.
This section discusses some of the things that you will want to know now that you have the Shadow Suite installed on your system. More information is contained in the manual pages for each command.
The
Shadow Suite
added the following command line oriented commands for adding, modifying, and deleting users. You may also have installed the
adduser
program.
The
useradd
command can be used to add users to the system. You also invoke this command to change the default settings.
The first thing that you should do is to examine the default settings and make changes specific to your system:
useradd -D
GROUP=1 HOME=/home INACTIVE=0 EXPIRE=0 SHELL= SKEL=/etc/skel
The defaults are probably not what you want, so if you started adding users now you would have to specify all the information for each user. However, we can and should change the default values.
On my system:
/bin/bash
useradd -D -g100 -e60 -f0 -s/bin/bash
Now running
useradd -D
will give:
GROUP=100 HOME=/home INACTIVE=0 EXPIRE=60 SHELL=/bin/bash SKEL=/etc/skel
Just in case you wanted to know, these defaults are stored in the file
/etc/default/useradd
.
Now you can use
useradd
to add users to the system. For example, to add the user
fred
, using the defaults, you would use the following:
useradd -m -c "Fred Flintstone" fred
This will create the following entry in the
/etc/passwd
file:
fred:*:505:100:Fred Flintstone:/home/fred:/bin/bash
And the following entry in the
/etc/shadow
file:
fred:!:0:0:60:0:0:0:0
fred
's home directory will be created and the contents of
/etc/skel
will be copied there because of the
-m
switch. Also, since we did not specify a UID, the next available one was used.
fred
's account is created, but
fred
still won't be able to login until we unlock the account. We do this by changing the password.
passwd fred
Changing password for fred Enter the new password (minimum of 5 characters) Please use a combination of upper and lower case letters and numbers. New Password: ******* Re-enter new password: *******
/etc/shadow
will contain:
fred:J0C.WDR1amIt6:9559:0:60:0:0:0:0
And
fred
will now be able to login and use the system. The nice thing about
useradd
and the other programs that come with the
Shadow Suite
is that they make changes to the
/etc/passwd
and
/etc/shadow
files atomically. So if you are adding a user, and another user is changing their password at the same time, both operations will be performed correctly.
You should use the supplied commands rather than directly editing
/etc/passwd
and
/etc/shadow
. If you were editing the
/etc/shadow
file, and a user were to change his password while you are editing, and then you were to save the file you were editing, the user's password change would be lost.
Here is a small interactive script that adds users using
useradd
and
passwd
:
#!/bin/bash
#
# /sbin/newuser - A script to add users to the system using the Shadow
# Suite's useradd and passwd commands.
#
# Written my Mike Jackson <mhjack@tscnet.com>
as an example for the Linux
# Shadow Password Howto. Permission to use and modify is expressly granted.
#
# This could be modified to show the defaults and allow modification similar
# to the Slackware Adduser program. It could also be modified to disallow
# stupid entries. (i.e. better error checking).
#
##
# Defaults for the useradd command
##
GROUP=100 # Default Group
HOME=/home # Home directory location (/home/username)
SKEL=/etc/skel # Skeleton Directory
INACTIVE=0 # Days after password expires to disable account (0=never)
EXPIRE=60 # Days that a passwords lasts
SHELL=/bin/bash # Default Shell (full path)
##
# Defaults for the passwd command
##
PASSMIN=0 # Days between password changes
PASSWARN=14 # Days before password expires that a warning is given
##
# Ensure that root is running the script.
##
WHOAMI=`/usr/bin/whoami`
if [ $WHOAMI != "root" ]; then
echo "You must be root to add news users!"
exit 1
fi
##
# Ask for username and fullname.
##
echo ""
echo -n "Username: "
read USERNAME
echo -n "Full name: "
read FULLNAME
#
echo "Adding user: $USERNAME."
#
# Note that the "" around $FULLNAME is required because this field is
# almost always going to contain at least on space, and without the "'s
# the useradd command would think that you we moving on to the next
# parameter when it reached the SPACE character.
#
/usr/sbin/useradd -c"$FULLNAME" -d$HOME/$USERNAME -e$EXPIRE \
-f$INACTIVE -g$GROUP -m -k$SKEL -s$SHELL $USERNAME
##
# Set password defaults
##
/bin/passwd -n $PASSMIN -w $PASSWARN $USERNAME>
/dev/null 2>
&1
##
# Let the passwd command actually ask for password (twice)
##
/bin/passwd $USERNAME
##
# Show what was done.
##
echo ""
echo "Entry from /etc/passwd:"
echo -n " "
grep "$USERNAME:" /etc/passwd
echo "Entry from /etc/shadow:"
echo -n " "
grep "$USERNAME:" /etc/shadow
echo "Summary output of the passwd command:"
echo -n " "
passwd -S $USERNAME
echo ""
Using a script to add new users is really much more preferable than editing the
/etc/passwd
or
/etc/shadow
files directly or using a program like the Slackware
adduser
program. Feel free to use and modify this script for your particular system.
For more information on the
useradd
see the online manual page.
The
usermod
program is used to modify the information on a user. The switches are similar to the
useradd
program.
Let's say that you want to change
fred
's shell, you would do the following:
usermod -s /bin/tcsh fred
Now
fred
's
/etc/passwd
file entry would be change to this:
fred:*:505:100:Fred Flintstone:/home/fred:/bin/tcsh
Let's make
fred
's account expire on 09/15/97:
usermod -e 09/15/97 fred
Now
fred
's entry in
/etc/shadow
becomes:
fred:J0C.WDR1amIt6:9559:0:60:0:0:10119:0
For more information on the
usermod
command see the online manual page.
userdel
does just what you would expect, it deletes the user's account. You simply use:
userdel -r username
The
-r
causes all files in the user's home directory to be removed along with the home directory itself. Files located in other file system will have to be searched for and deleted manually.
If you want to simply lock the account rather than delete it, use the
passwd
command instead.
The
passwd
command has the obvious use of changing passwords. Additionally, it is used by the
root
user to:
-l
and
-u
)
-x
)
-n
)
-w
)
-i
)
-S
)
For example, let look again at
fred
passwd -S fred
fred P 03/04/96 0 60 0 0
This means that
fred
's password is valid, it was last changed on 03/04/96, it can be changed at any time, it expires after 60 days, fred will not be warned, and and the account won't be disabled when the password expires.
This simply means that if
fred
logs in after the password expires, he will be prompted for a new password at login.
If we decide that we want to warn
fred
14 days before his password expires and make his account inactive 14 days after he lets it expire, we would need to do the following:
passwd -w14 -i14 fred
Now
fred
is changed to:
fred P 03/04/96 0 60 14 14
For more information on the
passwd
command see the online manual page.
The file
/etc/login
is the configuration file for the
login
program and also for the
Shadow Suite
as a whole.
/etc/login
contains settings from what the prompts will look like to what the default expiration will be when a user changes his password.
The
/etc/login.defs
file is quite well documented just by the comments that are contained within it. However, there are a few things to note:
From the above list you can see that this is a rather important file, and you should make sure that it is present, and that the settings are what you desire for your system.
The
/etc/groups
file may contain passwords that permit a user to become a member of a particular group. This function is enabled if you define the constant
SHADOWGRP
in the
/usr/src/shadow-YYMMDD/config.h
file.
If you define this constant and then compile, you must create an
/etc/gshadow
file to hold the group passwords and the group administrator information.
When you created the
/etc/shadow
, you used a program called
pwconv
, there no equivalent program to create the
/etc/gshadow
file, but it really doesn't matter, it takes care of itself.
To create the initial
/etc/gshadow
file do the following:
touch /etc/gshadow
chown root.root /etc/gshadow
chmod 700 /etc/gshadow
Once you create new groups, they will be added to the
/etc/group
and the
/etc/gshadow
files. If you modify a group by adding or removing users or changing the group password, the
/etc/gshadow
file will be changed.
The programs
groups
,
groupadd
,
groupmod
, and
groupdel
are provided as part of the
Shadow Suite
to modify groups.
The format of the
/etc/group
file is as follows:
groupname:!:GID:member,member,...
Where:
groupname
The name of the group
!
The field that normally holds the password, but that is now relocated to the
/etc/gshadow
file.
GID
The numerical group ID number
member
List of group members
The format of the
/etc/gshadow
file is as follows:
groupname:password:admin,admin,...:member,member,...
Where:
groupname
The name of the group
password
The encoded group password.
admin
List of group administrators
member
List of group members
The command
gpasswd
is used only for adding or removing administrators and members to or from a group.
root
or someone in the list of administrators may add or remove group members.
The groups password can be changed using the
passwd
command by
root
or anyone listed as an administrator for the group.
Despite the fact that there is not currently a manual page for
gpasswd
, typing
gpasswd
without any parameters gives a listing of options. It's fairly easy to grasp how it all works once you understand the file formats and the concepts.
The program
pwck
is provided to provide a consistency check on the
/etc/passwd
and
/etc/shadow
files. It will check each username and verify that it has the following:
It will also warn of any account that has no password.
It's a good idea to run
pwck
after installing the
Shadow Suite
. It's also a good idea to run it periodically, perhaps weekly or monthly. If you use the
-r
option, you can use
cron
to run it on a regular basis and have the report mailed to you.
grpck
is the consistency checking program for the
/etc/group
and
/etc/gshadow
files. It performs the following checks:
It also has the
-r
option for automated reports.
Dial-up passwords are another optional line of defense for systems that allow dial-in access. If you have a system that allows many people to connect locally or via a network, but you want to limit who can dial in and connect, then dial-up passwords are for you. To enable dial-up passwords, you must edit the file
/etc/login.defs
and ensure that
DIALUPS_CHECK_ENAB
is set to
yes
.
Two files contain the dial-up information,
/etc/dialups
which contains the ttys (one per line, with the leading "/dev/" removed). If a tty is listed then dial-up checks are performed.
The second file is the
/etc/d_passwd
file. This file contains the fully qualified path name of a shell, followed by an optional password.
If a user logs into a line that is listed in
/etc/dialups
, and his shell is listed in the file
/etc/d_passwd
he will be allowed access only by suppling the correct password.
Another useful purpose for using dial-up passwords might be to setup a line that only allows a certain type of connect (perhaps a PPP or UUCP connection). If a user tries to get another type of connection (i.e. a list of shells), he must know a password to use the line.
Before you can use the dial-up feature, you must create the files.
The command
dpasswd
is provided to assign passwords to the shells in the
/etc/d_passwd
file. See the manual page for more information.
Adding shadow support to a program is actually fairly straightforward. The only problem is that the program must be run by root (or SUID root) in order for the the program to be able to access the
/etc/shadow
file.
This presents one big problem: very careful programming practices must be followed when creating SUID programs. For instance, if a program has a shell escape, this must not occur as root if the program is SUID root.
For adding shadow support to a program so that it can check passwords, but otherwise does need to run as root, it's a lot safer to run the program SUID shadow instead. The
xlock
program is an example of this.
In the example given below,
pppd-1.2.1d
already runs SUID as root, so adding shadow support should not make the program any more vulnerable.
The header files should reside in
/usr/include/shadow
. There should also be a
/usr/include/shadow.h
, but it will be a symbolic link to
/usr/include/shadow/shadow.h
.
To add shadow support to a program, you need to include the header files:
#include <shadow/shadow.h> #include <shadow/pwauth.h>
It might be a good idea to use compiler directives to conditionally compile the shadow code (I do in the example below).
When you installed the
Shadow Suite
the
libshadow.a
file was created and installed in
/usr/lib
.
When compiling shadow support into a program, the linker needs to be told to include the
libshadow.a
library into the link.
This is done by:
gcc program.c -o program -lshadow
However, as we will see in the example below, most large programs use a
Makefile
, and usually have a variable called
LIBS=...
that we will modify.
The
libshadow.a
library uses a structure called
spwd
for the information it retrieves from the
/etc/shadow
file. This is the definition of the
spwd
structure from the
/usr/include/shadow/shadow.h
header file:
struct spwd
{
char *sp_namp; /* login name */
char *sp_pwdp; /* encrypted password */
sptime sp_lstchg; /* date of last change */
sptime sp_min; /* minimum number of days between changes */
sptime sp_max; /* maximum number of days between changes */
sptime sp_warn; /* number of days of warning before password
expires */
sptime sp_inact; /* number of days after password expires
until the account becomes unusable. */
sptime sp_expire; /* days since 1/1/70 until account expires
*/
unsigned long sp_flag; /* reserved for future use */
};
The
Shadow Suite
can put things into the
sp_pwdp
field besides just the encoded passwd. The password field could contain:
username:Npge08pfz4wuk;@/sbin/extra:9479:0:10000::::
This means that in addition to the password, the program
/sbin/extra
should be called for further authentication. The program called will get passed the username and a switch that indicates why it's being called. See the file
/usr/include/shadow/pwauth.h
and the source code for
pwauth.c
for more information.
What this means is that we should use the function
pwauth
to perform the actual authentication, as it will take care of the secondary authentication as well. The example below does this.
The author of the Shadow Suite indicates that since most programs in existence don't do this, and that it may be removed or changed in future versions of the Shadow Suite .
The
shadow.h
file also contains the function prototypes for the functions contained in the
libshadow.a
library:
extern void setspent __P ((void)); extern void endspent __P ((void)); extern struct spwd *sgetspent __P ((__const char *__string)); extern struct spwd *fgetspent __P ((FILE *__fp)); extern struct spwd *getspent __P ((void)); extern struct spwd *getspnam __P ((__const char *__name)); extern int putspent __P ((__const struct spwd *__sp, FILE *__fp));
The function that we are going to use in the example is:
getspnam
which will retrieve for us a
spwd
structure for the supplied name.
This is an example of adding shadow support to a program that needs it, but does not have it by default.
This example uses the
Point-to-Point Protocol Server
(pppd-1.2.1d), which has a mode in which it performs
PAP
authentication using user names and passwords from the
/etc/passwd
file instead of the
PAP
or
CHAP
files. You would not need to add this code to
pppd-2.2.0
because it's already there.
This feature of pppd probably isn't used very much, but if you installed the
Shadow Suite
, it won't work anymore because the passwords are no longer stored in
/etc/passwd
.
The code for authenticating users under
pppd-1.2.1d
is located in the
/usr/src/pppd-1.2.1d/pppd/auth.c
file.
The following code needs to be added to the top of the file where all the other
#include
directives are. We have surrounded the
#includes
with conditional directives (i.e. only include if we are compiling for shadow support).
#ifdef HAS_SHADOW #include <shadow.h> #include <shadow/pwauth.h> #endif
The next thing to do is to modify the actual code. We are still making changes to the
auth.c
file.
Function
auth.c
before modifications:
/*
* login - Check the user name and password against the system
* password database, and login the user if OK.
*
* returns:
* UPAP_AUTHNAK: Login failed.
* UPAP_AUTHACK: Login succeeded.
* In either case, msg points to an appropriate message.
*/
static int
login(user, passwd, msg, msglen)
char *user;
char *passwd;
char **msg;
int *msglen;
{
struct passwd *pw;
char *epasswd;
char *tty;
if ((pw = getpwnam(user)) == NULL) {
return (UPAP_AUTHNAK);
}
/*
* XXX If no passwd, let them login without one.
*/
if (pw->
pw_passwd == '\0') {
return (UPAP_AUTHACK);
}
epasswd = crypt(passwd, pw->
pw_passwd);
if (strcmp(epasswd, pw->
pw_passwd)) {
return (UPAP_AUTHNAK);
}
syslog(LOG_INFO, "user %s logged in", user);
/*
* Write a wtmp entry for this user.
*/
tty = strrchr(devname, '/');
if (tty == NULL)
tty = devname;
else
tty++;
logwtmp(tty, user, ""); /* Add wtmp login entry */
logged_in = TRUE;
return (UPAP_AUTHACK);
}
The user's password is placed into
pw->
pw_passwd
, so all we really need to do is add the function
getspnam
. This will put the password into
spwd->
sp_pwdp
.
We will add the function
pwauth
to perform the actual authentication. This will automatically perform secondary authentication if the shadow file is setup for it.
Function
auth.c
after modifications to support shadow:
/*
* login - Check the user name and password against the system
* password database, and login the user if OK.
*
* This function has been modified to support the Linux Shadow Password
* Suite if USE_SHADOW is defined.
*
* returns:
* UPAP_AUTHNAK: Login failed.
* UPAP_AUTHACK: Login succeeded.
* In either case, msg points to an appropriate message.
*/
static int
login(user, passwd, msg, msglen)
char *user;
char *passwd;
char **msg;
int *msglen;
{
struct passwd *pw;
char *epasswd;
char *tty;
#ifdef USE_SHADOW
struct spwd *spwd;
struct spwd *getspnam();
#endif
if ((pw = getpwnam(user)) == NULL) {
return (UPAP_AUTHNAK);
}
#ifdef USE_SHADOW
spwd = getspnam(user);
if (spwd)
pw->
pw_passwd = spwd->
sp-pwdp;
#endif
/*
* XXX If no passwd, let NOT them login without one.
*/
if (pw->
pw_passwd == '\0') {
return (UPAP_AUTHNAK);
}
#ifdef HAS_SHADOW
if ((pw->
pw_passwd && pw->
pw_passwd[0] == '@'
&& pw_auth (pw->
pw_passwd+1, pw->
pw_name, PW_LOGIN, NULL))
|| !valid (passwd, pw)) {
return (UPAP_AUTHNAK);
}
#else
epasswd = crypt(passwd, pw->
pw_passwd);
if (strcmp(epasswd, pw->
pw_passwd)) {
return (UPAP_AUTHNAK);
}
#endif
syslog(LOG_INFO, "user %s logged in", user);
/*
* Write a wtmp entry for this user.
*/
tty = strrchr(devname, '/');
if (tty == NULL)
tty = devname;
else
tty++;
logwtmp(tty, user, ""); /* Add wtmp login entry */
logged_in = TRUE;
return (UPAP_AUTHACK);
}
Careful examination will reveal that we made another change as well. The original version allowed access (returned
UPAP_AUTHACK
if there was NO password in the
/etc/passwd
file. This is
not
good, because a common use of this login feature is to use one account to allow access to the PPP process and then check the username and password supplied by PAP with the username in the
/etc/passwd
file and the password in the
/etc/shadow
file.
So if we had set the original version up to run as the shell for a user i.e.
ppp
, then anyone could get a ppp connection by setting their PAP to user
ppp
and a password of null.
We fixed this also by returning
UPAP_AUTHNAK
instead of
UPAP_AUTHACK
if the password field was empty.
Interestingly enough,
pppd-2.2.0
has the same problem.
Next we need to modify the Makefile so that two things occur:
USE_SHADOW
must be defined, and
libshadow.a
needs to be added to the linking process.
Edit the Makefile, and add:
LIBS = -lshadow
Then we find the line:
COMPILE_FLAGS = -I.. -D_linux_=1 -DGIDSET_TYPE=gid_t
And change it to:
COMPILE_FLAGS = -I.. -D_linux_=1 -DGIDSET_TYPE=gid_t -DUSE_SHADOW
Now make and install.
Q:
I used to control which tty's
root
could log into using the file
/etc/securettys
, but it doesn't seem to work anymore, what's going on?
A:
The file
/etc/securettys
does absolutely nothing now that the
Shadow Suite
is installed. The tty's that
root
can use are now located in the login configuration file
/etc/login.defs
. The entry in this file may point to another file.
Q: I installed the Shadow Suite , but now I can't login, what did I miss?
A:
You probably installed the Shadow programs, but didn't run
pwconv
or you forgot to copy
/etc/npasswd
to
/etc/passwd
and
/etc/nshadow
to
/etc/shadow
. Also, you may need to copy
login.defs
to
/etc
.
Q:
In the section on xlock, it said to change the group ownership of the
/etc/shadow
file to
shadow
. I don't have a
shadow
group, what do I do?
A:
You can add one. Simply edit the
/etc/group
file, and insert a line for the shadow group. You need to ensure that the group number is not used by another group, and you need to insert it before the
nogroup
entry. Or you can simply suid
xlock
to root.
Q: Is there a mailing list for the Linux Shadow Password Suite?
A:
Yes, but it's for the development and beta testing of the next Shadow Suite for Linux. You can get added to the list by mailing to:
shadow-list-request@neptune.cin.net
with a subject of:
subscribe
. The list is actually for discussions of the Linux
shadow-YYMMSS
series of releases. You should join if you want to get involved in further development or if you install the Suite on your system and want to get information on newer releases.
Q:
I installed the
Shadow Suite
, but when I use the
userdel
command, I get "userdel: cannot open shadow group file", what did I do wrong?
A:
You compiled the
Shadow Suite
with the
SHADOWGRP
option enabled, but you don't have an
/etc/gshadow
file. You need to either edit the
config.h
file and recompile, or create an
/etc/group
file. See the section on shadow groups.
Q:
I installed the
Shadow Suite
but now I'm getting encoded passwords back in my
/etc/passwd
file, what's wrong?
A:
You either enabled the
AUTOSHADOW
option in the Shadow
config.h
file, or your
libc
was compiled with the
SAHDOW_COMPAT
option. You need to determine which is the problem, and recompile.
The Linux Shadow Password HOWTO is Copyright (c) 1996 Michael H. Jackson.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this document under the conditions for verbatim copies above, provided a notice clearly stating that the document is a modified version is also included in the modified document.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this document into another language, under the conditions specified above for modified versions.
Permission is granted to convert this document into another media under the conditions specified above for modified versions provided the requirement to acknowledge the source document is fulfilled by inclusion of an obvious reference to the source document in the new media. Where there is any doubt as to what defines 'obvious' the copyright owner reserves the right to decide.
The code examples for
auth.c
are taken from pppd-1.2.1d and ppp-2.1.0e, Copyright (c) 1993 and The Australian National University and Copyright (c) 1989 Carnegie Mellon University.
Thanks to Marek Michalkiewicz <marekm@i17linuxb.ists.pwr.wroc.pl> for writing and maintaining the Shadow Suite for Linux, and for his review and comments on this document.
Thanks to Ron Tidd <rtidd@tscnet.com> for his helpful review and testing.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me feedback to help improve this document.
Please, if you have any comments or suggestions then mail them to me.
regards
Michael H. Jackson <mhjack@tscnet.com>