How the heck can it work?

[James Sutherland]

On Mon, 24 Jul 2000, Ron Alexander wrote:

> What I meant, is that the returning of the password (encrypted or not) is
> not allowed in a POSIX conforming application. The API call is 'struct
> passwd *getpwnam(const char *name);' Neither the pw_password nor pw_gecos
> fields of the  passwd struct are available in POSIX.1.
> 
> As far as I know, there is no other method to get the password.
> 
> The 'toeing the line' comment was from a friend of mine who pointed out that
> many non POSIX conforming systems were changing the getpwnam call to NOT
> return the password so they would be POSIX conforming. Now that I think
> about it though, it makes no sense unless there is another way to
> authenticate a user.

OK, how are passwords stored on this system?


James.