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Date: Sat, 04 Jul 1998 23:13:08 -0400
From: Dennis Boone <drb@msu.edu>
Sender: drb@yagi.h-net.msu.edu
Reply-To: drb@msu.edu
To: freebsd-gnats-submit@freebsd.org, schweikh@noc.dfn.de
Subject:

>Number:         7165
>Category:       junk
>Synopsis:       
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    gnats-admin
>State:          closed
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:  
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Sat Jul  4 20:20:01 PDT 1998
>Closed-Date:    Sun Jul 12 17:22:57 PDT 1998
>Last-Modified:  Wed Oct 26 05:42:16 GMT 2005
>Originator:     
>Release:        
>Organization:
>Environment:
>Description:
>How-To-Repeat:
>Fix:
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
State-Changed-From-To: open->closed 
State-Changed-By: steve 
State-Changed-When: Sun Jul 12 17:22:57 PDT 1998 
State-Changed-Why:  
Doesn't appear to have sufficient details to determine if this 
a real problem.  If so, please submit a new PR.  Thanks. 
>Unformatted:
I was bitten by this same problem, and independently found the cause.
I wasted a lot of time tracking it down.  My application is trying to
let web users make changes to password file entries.  I generate a perl
script, set the EDITOR variable to point to it, then run chpass.

My reaction was "you've _got_ to be kidding."  Given the myriad of files,
the need to rebuild databases, locking, etcetera, these programs need
to support programmatic modification to the user database, rather than
forcing people to rewrite it every time.  Chpass obviously expects to
be run from other programs, else why the ability to provide it with a
passwd(5) format line?

I urge the millisecond fix, or a checksum approach, or whatever.  Yes,
I can fix the source and recompile.  No, I don't want to have to do this
every time I perform an upgrade.

Dennis Boone
H-Net
