I am aware of a change in v15.2 that means ALL passwords will expire after installation and must be reset manually so they can be re-hashed - meaning all accounts are offline until this takes place.
This is completly unworkable for your customers and I would like to share some real world scenarios to explain why.
We have 100's of accounts for sensors and equipment around the world in remote locations that report in data every 15 mins. These are pre-programmed with a host, username and password. It is impossible to change the details on these units, many are unmanned remote locations. These user accounts connect by FTP and SFTP so they have no interface to change the passwords.
All user accounts would be cut off at the point of installation until all passwords had been reset. Furthermore it would take days and days to manually change these in the admin panel directly and there is room for error. Not only this but the latest announcement says that the existing password cannot be used.
Another example would be systems using the service to pick up orders, or instructions for manufacturing - these systems would all go down until all passwords were reset manually both on the account and on the system (which could take days to organise and may not even be physically possible), the distruption would be huge and unworkable. Solarwinds must remember that Serv-U is used in environments where there are hundreds or thousands of user accounts, this is why we pay so much for this software and maintenance - it is business critical.
My suggestion for the fix is simple..
After the upgrade to v15.2, when a user account logs in successfully, the current password is rehashed and stored. A flag can be stored on the account to identify it uses the new algorythm and the next time they login it uses that to validate the password. This is normal practice for password algorythm migration.
This is an URGENT issue that needs to be addressed as it affects every single Serv-U customer.
Please give us an update and your plan to address this as soon as possible.