[ale] passwd and shadow

[Terry Bailey]

I have a server in a data center and am not allowed to login with 
root because the password has been corrupted.  I thought that if 
these files were cached, then a power down and reboot would fix it.

At 11:36 AM 6/17/2008, you wrote:
>On Tue, 2008-06-17 at 11:09 -0400, Terry Bailey wrote:
> > Hi,
>
> > After booting, do copies of the passwd and shadow files reside in RAM?
>
>         Meaning leftovers from the previous boot or what?
>
>         In principle, sure.  They are simple files which will be 
> cached by the
>file system when they are accessed.  The passwd file itself isn't
>particularly sensitive.  The shadow file could be sensitive but, as long
>as people are using and enforcing strong passwords, that should be too
>bad since only root can access kmem on the running system.  Anyone with
>access to kmem can be presumed to have access to shadow.
>
>         What's the problem that is concerning you?
>
> > Thanks,
>
> > Terry Bailey
>
>         Mike
>--
>Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
>    /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
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>
>
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