Before you install this package, you may want to have a look at the Shadow hint. It discusses how you can make your system more secure regarding passwords, such as how to enable the more secure MD5 passwords and how to get the most out of this Shadow package. The Shadow hint can be found at . Programs like login, shutdown, uptime, and others want to read from and to the /var/run/utmp, /var/log/btmp and /var/log/wtmp. These files contain information about who is currently logged in. They also contain information about when the conmputer was last booted and shutdown and a record of bas login attempts. Create these files with their proper permissions by running the following commands: touch /var/run/utmp /var/log/{btmp,lastlog,wtmp} chmod 644 /var/run/utmp /var/log/{btmp,lastlog,wtmp} Shadow hard-codes the path to the passwd binary within itself, but it does it the wrong way. If no passwd binary is present before installing Shadow, it (wrongly) assumes that it will be at /bin/passwd, but then installs its own in /usr/bin/passwd. This will lead to strange errors about not finding /bin/passwd. To fix workaround this bug in Shadow, we'll create a dummy passwd file so that it gets hardcoded in the right place: touch /usr/bin/passwd Prepare Shadow to be compiled: ./configure --prefix=/usr --libdir=/usr/lib \     --enable-shared Continue with compiling the package: make Install the package: make install Shadow uses two files to configure authentication settings for the system. Install those config files: cp etc/{limits,login.access} /etc /var/spool/mail is the old location of the user mailboxes. The location that is used nowadays is /var/mail. Issue the following command to modify the mailbox location: sed 's%/var/spool/mail%/var/mail%' \     etc/login.defs.linux > /etc/login.defs According to the manpage of vipw, a vigr symlink should exist. Because the shadow installation procedure doesn't create this symlink, it must be created manually: ln -s vipw /usr/sbin/vigr The vipw link is currently pointing to a non-existing file. Since this file isn't needed here, remove it: rm /bin/vipw Move the sg program to the /usr/bin directory: mv /bin/sg /usr/bin Move Shadow's dynamic libraries to a more appropriate location: mv /usr/lib/lib{shadow,misc}.so.0* /lib The libraries have been moved, but some packages expect to find them in them in the /usr/lib directory. To account for this, create the following symlinks: ln -sf ../../lib/libshadow.so.0 /usr/lib/libshadow.so ln -sf ../../lib/libmisc.so.0 /usr/lib/libmisc.so Sh-utils and Shadow Password Suite each install a unique groups program. If you wish, you may remove the groups program installed by the Shadow Password Suite: rm /bin/groups