password file migration

[Kris Kennaway]

On Thu, Jun 14, 2007 at 02:57:41PM -0700, Mark Messier wrote:
> 
> I know this has been covered before, but the search mechanism
> at the mailing list archive doesn't seem to work (zero matches for
> the word: password).
> 
> I've got a 5.3 system and a 6.2 system.  I want to migrate the user
> accounts from the 5.3 to the 6.2.  They use different encryption
> mechanisms for the password in master.password.
> 
> Other that running a cracker, is there a way to upconvert the
> old to the new?

They are backwards compatible formats, so why do you want to change?

If you are concerned that the old password hash is insecure (if it's
an ancient DES password, this is true), then you will need to generate
a new password for each affected account.  One way to do this is by
using password expiry to force a change on next user login (see
e.g. pw(8)).

Kris