It would be useful if the CRYPT password storage scheme included support
for the MD5 or SHA256 password hashes on platforms whose underlying
crypt(3) implementation supports them.

This would allow for longer, stronger while retaining compatibility with
most modern Unix-like operating systems, such as Linux, *BSD, and
Solaris.

For example, Sun DSEE 6 uses nsslapd-pluginarg0 to specify a format
string used to generate the password's salt:

nsslapd-pluginarg0: $1$%.8s$

However, it might be preferable for the parameter to take a value such
as MD5 or SHA256.

In our environment, this is needed to support systems which do not
directly use LDAP, but have the password hashes from the LDAP servers
propagated to them on an as-needed basis.