Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin

>What's the usage of the files passwd & group in etc under the ftp
>root dir? I haven't find any man pages on that yet.

They're used by the ls command in anonymous FTP to translate numeric uids and groupids to names.

>- Is it the same format as those in /etc?

Yes.

>- Is there any security risk to symbol link those in /etc?

It won't work. Anonymous FTP runs in a chroot environment and can't access anything outside of ~ftp.

If you're using shadow passwords you can simply make a copy of /etc/passwd. But if you're not using shadow passwords, you should first take all the encrypted passwords out of the file. Otherwise, someone could download the file and then run a password cracker over the passwords.

Barry Margolin

> > permissions probably aren't a=r.
>
> you mean passwd & group? hmm, yes they are: