Solaris 9 setting passlength 8

Question

all:
when i have PASSLENGTH=8 in /etc/default/passwd and if i have user with say 9 characters as password, at login time, only the first 8 characters are checked.
I googled and found some info on doing the below.
1. cat /etc/security/crypt.conf (has 3 crypto algorithms defined)
1 crypt_bsdmd5.so.1
2a crypt_bsdbf.so.1
md5 crypt_sunmd5.so.1
2. vi /etc/security/policy.conf
change CRYPT_DEFAULT=__unix__ to
CRYPT_DEFAULT=1
Now, the above 2 steps causes password check enforced for > 8 characters for SOLARIS 10 only.
IT does not work for SOLARIS 9
Appreciate any tips.

Answer 1

i looked at
http://brandonhutchinson.com/wiki/index.php5?title=Solaris_Password_Policy
In "Storing Passwords in MD5 Format" section, i see the following information which seems to indicate it will work with Solaris 9
"With Solaris 9 12/02 and later, user passwords may be stored in a format other than crypt_unix by modifying /etc/security/policy.conf. Changing the default encryption algorithm *allows passwords to have more than 8 significant characters*; with crypt_unix, password and password1 are the same password.
To begin storing user passwords in crypt_bsdmd5, make the following change in /etc/security/policy.conf. "
But in this same document at "Password Length and Complexity" section, I see this
"The default Solaris install does not provide pam_cracklib or pam_passwdqc. If the default password complexity rules are insufficient, these PAM modules (preferably pam_passwdqc) should be used. "
So, i may need to install pam_passwdqc..