[plug] Password Composition

[Earnshaw, Mike]

Mike,

<snip>
> No, the password is encrypted, so any bad char's (like : or #) wouldn't
> appear in the passwd file. (You didn't edit it by hand did you?)

No I did *not* edit the file by hand. This was afresh install of RH6.1. I
entered my normal "SysAdmin" password (that I use on the NT boxes too - I
know this is bad practice, but my brain can't handle many "SysAdmin"
passwords, hence the use of punctuation chars) and it was accepted by the
install program. But when I tried to log on as root after a reboot it would
not accept my password.

It has been suggested I may have made a typo (which I thought too), but I
triple checked what I was doing at the keyboard, one finger, one hand,
mumbling the password ... (no caps lock etc)

It completely baffled me. I logged in as single user mode and changed the
password no probs. Completely confused as the check password (second typing)
must have matched what I typed the first time, and two mistypes at exactly
the same place appear statistically out to me.

Mike