When the password field is empty in /etc/passwd, passwd does not add the encrypted passwd to the field, and it does not indicate it with an error. Here is the complete experiment: # useradd okidoki # grep okidoki /etc/passwd okidoki:!!:519:520::/home/okidoki:/bin/bash # emacs /etc/passwd (empty password field) # grep okidoki /etc/passwd okidoki::519:520::/home/okidoki:/bin/bash # passwd okidoki Changing password for user okidoki New UNIX password: (typed MaciLaci) Retype new UNIX password: (MaciLaci) passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully root@moni: ~ # grep okidoki /etc/passwd okidoki::519:520::/home/okidoki:/bin/bash How can this be a problem (besides, that I think it is not a correct behavior) since RH 6.0 does not let you log in w/o an empty passwd field? Well, imagine that on a yp server, after emptying the passwd field, I run passwd (thinking passwd is set), then run (cd /var/yp; make) Now, on another older (5.2) RH box on the same NIS domain, I could log in as okidoki w/o a passwd! (I ran this experiment with a 5.2 box as a yp server but passwd-0.58-1 and pwdb-0.58-3 installed). Let me remark that yppasswd seems to behave correctly, but linuxconf also gets confused (I guess it is running passwd). Mate Wierdl
This has been confirmed in the test lab.
Should be fixed in the next release.