Case: A user is added manually to /etc/passwd The password is set with passwd Result: Still no entry in /etc/shadow and thus the user cannot login. This might be the right behaviour, but then the passwd command shouldn't report "success". Regards, Mads
Don't add users only in /etc/passwd. User useradd.
Agreed. But some (slightly bogus) programs modifies /etc/passwd directly. When passwd for such a user is set, then passwd should at least check if the system is using shadows, and if that is the case then it should not report success!