[Fedora] Re: Upgrading old RH server

[Kevin Martin]

Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
> Kevin Kofler wrote:
>> There's no way to convert the passwords automatically as the hashes
>> used are
>> not reversible by design (otherwise it would just be cheap
>> obfuscation and
>> add no real security).
>>   
>    Considering the old method seems to work just fine on FC10, what
> could I be breaking if I just do that?  Do a clean FC10 install, then
> recover the pertinent files from backup, including that /etc/shadow
> file which has everyone's current passwords.
>
>    Sooner or later, everyone will have their password expire and it
> becomes a moot point, but till then, can I expect things to run fine?
>
Beware the use of the new password scheme if this is a NIS master server
and you have any NIS clients that aren't RH/Fedora (recent) machines.  I
have a mixed bag of AIX, SunOS (8 and 10), and Linux (old RH and newer
Fedora) and I had to force the use of the old password algorithms as
SunOS 8 and older AIX can't handle the new scheme.

Kevin