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pwdauth  -  password  authentication program is a program that is
used by the function to do the hard work.  It is  a  setuid  root
utility  so  that  it  is  able to read the shadow password file.
expects on  standard  input  two  null  terminated  strings,  the
password  typed  by  the  user,  and  the salt.  That is, the two
arguments of the function.  The input read in a single read  call
must  be  1024 characters or less including the nulls.  takes one
of two actions depending on the salt.  If the salt has  the  form
"##user"  then  the  is used to index the shadow password file to
obtain the encrypted password.  The input password  is  encrypted
with   the  one-way  encryption  function  contained  within  and
compared to the encrypted password from the shadow password file.
If  equal  then  returns  the  string  "##user" with exit code 0,
otherwise exit code 2 to signal failure.  The string "##user"  is
also  returned if both the shadow password and the input password
are null strings to allow a password-less login.  If the salt  is
not  of  the form "##user" then the password is encrypted and the
result of the encryption is returned.  If salt and  password  are
null strings then a null string is returned.  The return value is
written to standard output as a null terminated  string  of  1024
characters or less including the null.  The exit code is 1 on any
error.  A password must be checked like in this example: pw_ok  =
(strcmp(crypt(key,  pw->pw_passwd),  pw->pw_passwd)  ==  0);  The
second argument of crypt must be the  entire  encrypted  password
and not just the two character salt.  Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)