[5393] in SIPB bug reports
Re: Bug in xscreensaver on SGIs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Mon May 15 20:49:43 1995
To: sirslick@MIT.EDU
Cc: bug-sipb@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 15 May 1995 20:23:39 EDT."
<9505160023.AA20341@w20-575-105.MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 15 May 1995 20:51:37 EDT
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
> I tried typing in the root password, which works with the standard
> SGI screensaver, and that did not work either. What did work was
> typing in my old password!
Okay, here's how this might have happened:
When you log into an SGI, it puts an entry for you in the /etc/passwd
file, along with an encrypted password. xscreensaver uses this
encrypted password to check the password when you unlock the screen.
Unlike other kinds of machines, the SGI doesn't clean out your
/etc/passwd entry when you log out, and it might stay there for a long
time.
When you change your password, it changes your password on the
Kerberos servers, but not the encrypted password field in the
/etc/passwd of on every SGI you've logged into. So your old password
is used.
This isn't really an xscreensaver bug, and I think the SGI team is
aware of it. I suspect it will be fixed in the not-too-distant
future, although IS has had the somewhat crazy attitude about SGIs
that they don't necessarily need to work well.
