Backing up password/group/userfiles

keripukki · 09-22-2004, 01:46 PM

Hi,
I'm running FreeBSD server and today I had to reinstall it. Now I have problems with password and userfiles. I have taken backup of whole /etc directory but I'm not sure what files I should copy to new system to get user accounts and passwords work like before?

I tried copying master.passwd, group and passwd -files but users still can't login to system. Strange this is that I still can.

Stack · 09-22-2004, 06:06 PM

I am no expert on the cryptographic system implemented on FreeBSD but i am pretty sure the password hashes are generated using the entropy created when the system was installed. In other words the password 'xyz' would encrypt to something different under another machine not installed at exactly the same time. This is implemented for security reason and to prevent attacks from rainbow tables etc...