I like the asterisks appearing when I key in my password when logging in.

The new /bin/login program (from the shadow package in a) on SL13.1 no longer accepts the GETPASS_ASTERISKS value in /etc/login.defs.

I want to recompile the old SL13.0 version and replace the new SL13.1 version with the recompiled old SL13.0 version.

Does anyone know of any problems that this may cause?

Crikey!

Is it that easy to remove an OPTIONAL feature?

Why is it necessary to remove a feature that was optional in any case?

Maybe because it's not really good to show these asteriks, from a security point of view : then anyone could know the length of your password.

But still, yes, it was an optional setting, so I think the people who were enabling it knew what they're doing.

I don't think that using an old version of "login" with a recent version of shadow will work (a lot of other things changed in /etc/login.defs). The best solution, IMHO, would be to revert their patch (which you can create by looking at the diff between the last version having this feature and the one which removed it, or by looking at their git/svn tree if they use one).

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Thanks Tsomi. Yes, it does look more complicated than I at first thought. I'll look at the patches: