UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am new to UNIX and I am trying to read an etc/passwd file. I have 2 questions.

1) Looking at several of the User IDs, there are appears to be alphanumeric characters under the password column, for Root and Oracle. Does this mean that the password is not encrypted?

2) Should I be concerned that the "nobody" ID has a UID of -2? Also, should I have concerns that several User IDs have UID's set to 0 along with root.

3) Also, is there any risk associated with these settings?

Maybe giving us your OS and version can help us see more clear or not give you erroneous replies...
1) OK, and the others? what do they have?
2) nobody... will depend of OS... Several named admins can be a concern and sure is could leed to security issues if not understood and mastered..
There is one way to reduce risk: allow root login only from the console ( you are talking of a server, you do have a console yes?), all users must then use su to these superuser accounts...
But to say more we nned to know also more about your system...

Thank you for your follow-up.

From my understanding, it is a HP-UX v11, both for the application and database servers.

It appears on the etc/passwd as follows:

root:WQ1mYBE39ot
oracle:5m473MOqY3n2

but then other IDs like adm have the "*" listed in the password field.

adm is not a user as you and me and * means you cannot use the account like that
type: e.g.

Code:

ant:/var/adm/syslog $ uname -r
B.11.11

Because I dont kmow for 11.00 but 11.11 you can find a package to have the passwds in a shadow file ( the case of the box you see above... )
Otherwise it means that the passwd are what you see and as /etc/passwd is readable for all someone can copy it and has the hash..., the heavier alternative would be to turn on the trusted mode, but I dont advise that for people not having much knowlege about the plaform because you can quickly get into trouble like root account disabled etc... you need to know how the trusted mode works, where are the trusted DB and format and how to configure suitably the defaults... /etc/shadow is far easier though not as good...
this is how your /etc/passwd would look like after using the shadow module:

Code:

root:x:0:3::/:/sbin/sh
daemon:x:1:5::/:/sbin/sh
bin:x:2:2::/usr/bin:/sbin/sh
sys:x:3:3::/:
adm:x:4:4::/var/adm:/sbin/sh
uucp:x:5:3::/var/spool/uucppublic:/usr/lbin/uucp/uucico
lp:x:9:7::/var/spool/lp:/sbin/sh
nuucp:x:11:11::/var/spool/uucppublic:/usr/lbin/uucp/uucico
hpdb:x:27:1:ALLBASE:/:/sbin/sh
nobody:x:-2:-2::/:
www:x:30:1::/:
webadmin:x:40:1::/usr/obam/server/nologindir:/usr/bin/false
sshd:x:102:103:sshd privsep:/var/empty:/usr/bin/false
iwww:x:103:1::/home/iwww:/sbin/sh
owww:x:104:1::/home/owww:/sbin/sh
collma:x:108:526:,,,:/home/collma:/usr/bin/ksh
opc_op:x:777:77:OpC default operator:/home/opc_op:/usr/bin/ksh
vbe:x:200:2::/home/vbe:/usr/bin/ksh
gca:x:201:2::/home/gca:/usr/bin/ksh
.
.

I think it is v20 or above, but the information you have provided is very good. Thank you for that and I will definitely make a note of it.

Also, is having a negative UID okay or should that be changed to a high positive integer for the nobody ID?

as you can see I have nobody -2 also...

version: uname -r
11.23 is v2...