SUMMARY: 9 character passwords invalid?

[Christopher L. Barnard]

I asked:

> With the advent of Solaris 9 and the end of the 8 character limitation on
> passwords, I have started to gradually increase the length of the passwords.
> I am doing this slowly to make sure nothing breaks.
>
> Well, I think something has.
>
> On the few solaris 9 servers that have 9 character root passwords, it is
> impossible to go to single user mode.  When prompted for the root password
> to enter single user mode, the 9 character password is not recognized.
> The first 8 characters of that 9 digit password were also not recognized.
> It was necessary to bring the box back up to multi-user mode, change the
> root password to an 8 character password and then go into single-user
> mode.  The server accepted the new 8 character password just fine.
>
> btw, on these servers I have changed the default algorithm from DES
> (__unix__) to blowfish.  However changing the password, still in blowfish,
> to 8 characters resolved the problem so I do not believe its the algorithm.
>
> So has anyone else seen this behavior where on a Solaris 9 server a root
> password of more than 8 characters is not honored when entering
> single-user or maintenance mode?  TIA.

The solution:

Sun Alert number 57463.  We actually solved the problem last night, since
that Alert specifies a patch needed and that was one of the patches we
installed. A one-sentence summary of SA 57463: install 112874-06 or
higher and 113482-02 or higher.

Thanks to:

Hendrik Visage <hvisage at is.co.za>
Darren Dunham <ddunham at taos.com>
Sun Microsystems Support

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| Christopher L. Barnard         O     When I was a boy I was told that |
| cbarnard at tsg.cbot.com         / \    anybody could become president.  |
| (312) 347-4901               O---O   Now I'm beginning to believe it. |
| http://www.cs.uchicago.edu/~cbarnard                --Clarence Darrow |
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