Tips and tricks: Choosing the password hashing algorithm for /etc/shadow during installation

This is a new feature that has been requested in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux product line. The supported algorithms are DES, MD5, and SHA-256/512. They will be available after the upcoming updates releases as well as in Rawhide. The new algorithms will be configurable via Kickstart only. Here is the correct code.

DES

authconfig --enableshadow --passalgo=descrypt
rootpw fedora

MD5

authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5
rootpw fedora

or

authconfig --enableshadow --passalgo=md5
rootpw fedora

SHA-256

authconfig --enableshadow --passalgo=sha256
rootpw fedora

SHA-512

authconfig --enableshadow --passalgo=sha512
rootpw fedora

If you provide an encrypted root password in the above examples it will not be encrypted again.

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This entry was posted by Alexander Todorov on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Red Hat Enterprise Linux, tips and tricks, technical. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.