Re: pgcryto strangeness...

> host=# SELECT DIGEST('asdf', 'md5') FROM users_shadow;
> digest
> ------------------------------------------------
> \221.\310\003\262\316I\344\245A\006\215IZ\265p
> (1 row)

You must encode() the results.

(For the record, I consider that a serious design flaw.
It may not be possible to safely dump and restore tables
containing unencoded 8-bit data.)

> host=# SELECT DIGEST(password, 'md5') FROM users_shadow;
> ERROR: Function 'digest(varchar, unknown)' does not exist
> Unable to identify a function that satisfies the given argument types
> You may need to add explicit typecasts
> host=# SELECT DIGEST(CAST(password AS bytea), CAST('md5' AS TEXT)) FROM users_shadow;
> ERROR: Cannot cast type 'varchar' to 'bytea'

Try dropping the first cast.