How To Install libxcrypt on CentOS 8
Introduction
In this tutorial we learn how to install libxcrypt on CentOS 8.
What is libxcrypt
libxcrypt is a modern library for one-way hashing of passwords. It supports DES, MD5, SHA-2-256, SHA-2-512, and bcrypt-based password hashes, and provides the traditional Unix ‘crypt’ and ‘crypt_r’ interfaces, as well as a set of extended interfaces pioneered by Openwall Linux, ‘crypt_rn’, ‘crypt_ra’, ‘crypt_gensalt’, ‘crypt_gensalt_rn’, and ‘crypt_gensalt_ra’. libxcrypt is intended to be used by login(1), passwd(1), and other similar programs; that is, to hash a small number of passwords during an interactive authentication dialogue with a human. It is not suitable for use in bulk password-cracking applications, or in any other situation where speed is more important than careful handling of sensitive data. However, it is intended to be fast and lightweight enough for use in servers that must field thousands of login attempts per minute. On Linux-based systems, by default libxcrypt will be binary backward compatible with the libcrypt.so.1 shipped as part of the GNU C Library. This means that all existing binary executables linked against glibc’s libcrypt should work unmodified with this library’s libcrypt.so.1. We have taken pains to provide exactly the same “symbol versions” as were used by glibc on various CPU architectures, and to account for the variety of ways in which the Openwall extensions were patched into glibc’s libcrypt by some Linux distributions. (For instance, compatibility symlinks for SuSE’s “libowcrypt” are provided.) However, the converse is not true will not work with glibc’s libcrypt. Also, programs that use certain legacy APIs supplied by glibc’s libcrypt (’encrypt’, ’encrypt_r’, ‘setkey’, ‘setkey_r’, and ‘fcrypt’) cannot be compiled against libxcrypt. libxcrypt is a modern library for one-way hashing of passwords. It supports DES, MD5, SHA-2-256, SHA-2-512, and bcrypt-based password hashes, and provides the traditional Unix ‘crypt’ and ‘crypt_r’ interfaces, as well as a set of extended interfaces pioneered by Openwall Linux, ‘crypt_rn’, ‘crypt_ra’, ‘crypt_gensalt’, ‘crypt_gensalt_rn’, and ‘crypt_gensalt_ra’. libxcrypt is intended to be used by login(1), passwd(1), and other similar programs; that is, to hash a small number of passwords during an interactive authentication dialogue with a human. It is not suitable for use in bulk password-cracking applications, or in any other situation where speed is more important than careful handling of sensitive data. However, it is intended to be fast and lightweight enough for use in servers that must field thousands of login attempts per minute. On Linux-based systems, by default libxcrypt will be binary backward compatible with the libcrypt.so.1 shipped as part of the GNU C Library. This means that all existing binary executables linked against glibc’s libcrypt should work unmodified with this library’s libcrypt.so.1. We have taken pains to provide exactly the same “symbol versions” as were used by glibc on various CPU architectures, and to account for the variety of ways in which the Openwall extensions were patched into glibc’s libcrypt by some Linux distributions. (For instance, compatibility symlinks for SuSE’s “libowcrypt” are provided.) However, the converse is not true will not work with glibc’s libcrypt. Also, programs that use certain legacy APIs supplied by glibc’s libcrypt (’encrypt’, ’encrypt_r’, ‘setkey’, ‘setkey_r’, and ‘fcrypt’) cannot be compiled against libxcrypt.
We can use yum or dnf to install libxcrypt on CentOS 8. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install libxcrypt.
Install libxcrypt on CentOS 8 Using yum
Update yum database with yum using the following command.
sudo yum makecache
After updating yum database, We can install libxcrypt using yum by running the following command:
sudo yum -y install libxcrypt
Install libxcrypt on CentOS 8 Using dnf
If you don’t have dnf installed you can install DNF on CentOS 7 first.
Update yum database with dnf using the following command.
sudo dnf makecache
After updating yum database, We can install libxcrypt using dnf by running the following command:
sudo dnf -y install libxcrypt
How To Uninstall libxcrypt on CentOS 8
To uninstall only the libxcrypt package we can use the following command:
sudo dnf remove libxcrypt
References
Summary
In this tutorial we learn how to install libxcrypt on CentOS 8 using yum and dnf.