password synchronization - newbie question

We are using SQL Server authentication in a new W2k system that is replacing
a legacy UNIX system. I have a script that successfully recreates the user
accounts, but of course I have to default the password. Our security folks w
ill never agree to such a s
cheme, especially since I have read on this newsgroup that there is no way t
o force the users to change their passwords the first time they log on. Is t
here any way to port the users' UNIX passwords to SQL Server 2000? I can cap
ture the encrypted UNIX pas
swords, and was hoping there was a way to use them to populate the "password
" field of the master.sysxlogins table. Is the encryption used for UNIX in
any way compatible or "translate-able" to the encryption used by SQL Server?
This would probably be much easier if we were using Windows authentication,
but for our particular implementation, we have some other compelling reasons
not to.No the encryption algorithm is not going to be the same as any Unix based
system.
I would think that if you're writing a custom application you could force
the users to execute sp_password
at the same interval as the Unix system. But, if the users are simply
using Query Analyser and the other SQL tools,
there's no way to force this.
Yukon, the next release may address password policy enforcement that would
resolve issues like this.
Thanks,
Kevin McDonnell
Microsoft Corporation
This posting is provided AS IS with no warranties, and confers no rights.|||Thank you, Kevin. I'll talk to our developers about adding a call to sp_pass
word.