linux book...question

[Dam_Edged]

    I have read about half of the book, and I have learned a lot from
it.
I followed the author's partitioning advice. I was really surprised
about the password security part. After reading that chapter,
I have a feeling that none of my passwords in the past were
even close to being "good" passwords. I downloaded Crack,
and played around with it some (to crack my passwords.. of course),
but my passwords are shadowed, and the script (shadmrg.sv)
for merging the two files didn't work for me. I guess that I will
have to buy the book on shell programming after all. :)
    I also installed tripwire, and it took a bit to get it working
because the
policy file was written for redhat 7.0 , and I'm running
Mandrake 7.2. I basically commented out all (about 70?)of the paths
in the policy file that didn't work on my machine. Why are there so many

differences in the files and paths? Is this because RH 7.0 and MD 7.2
are
not the same and because I don't have all the different programs
installed? I'm not too worried about commenting the paths out, because
I really don't think I need Tripwire, but since I am so new to the *nix
world,
it's a fun (well..sort of) learning experience to set it up. Have any of
you
set up a policy file for tripwire?

Thanks,
           Don

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