- The man page I get is slightly different: % man 5 passwd PASSWD(5) FreeBSD File Formats Manual PASSWD(5)
NAME passwd, master.passwd -- format of the password file
DESCRIPTION
The passwd files are the local source of password information. They can
be used in conjunction with the Hesiod domains passwd' and uid', and
the NIS maps passwd.byname', passwd.byuid', master.passwd.byname', and master.passwd.byuid', as controlled by nsswitch.conf(5).
For consistency, none of these files should ever be modified manually.
The master.passwd file is readable only by root, and consists of newline separated records, one per user, containing ten colon (`:') separated fields. These fields are as follows:
[...]
The passwd file is generated from the master.passwd file by pwd_mkdb(8), has the class, change, and expire fields removed, and the password field replaced by a `*' character.
[...] In the master.passwd file, the password field is the encrypted form of the password, see crypt(3). If the password field is empty, no password will be required to gain access to the machine. This is almost invari- ably a mistake, so authentication components such as PAM can forcibly disallow remote access to passwordless accounts. Because this file con- tains the encrypted user passwords, it should not be readable by anyone without appropriate privileges.
A password of *' indicates that password authentication is disabled for that account (logins through other forms of authentication, e.g., using ssh(1) keys, will still work). The field only contains encrypted pass- words, and *' can never be the result of encrypting a password.
Do I need to tell dovecot to check master.passwd instead of passwd?
2. Is my (simple) passdb OK?
passdb { args = blocking=no driver = passwd } I guess it would be easy to try it without the "args" line. 4. Sometimes I log in as www to do web page stuff, so files are owned by www. www has a shell, and a password, and can ssh fine. Thanks for your help! Bob
On Sunday, February 5, 2017 2:58 AM, Christian Kivalo <ml+dovecot@valo.at> wrote:dovecot: auth: passwd(xxx,xxx,<40AjQMFHSLVLGJAC>): invalid password field '*'
The '*' in passwd password field stands for login disabled. See man 5 passwd or http://www.manpages.info/freebsd/passwd.5.html
-ERR [AUTH] Authentication failed.
This is probably because the users login is disabled.
In one oft your provided log outputs you are trying to login as user 'www'. Why? The webserver user has the login normaly disabled.