path: root/share/man/man5/passwd.5

.\"	$OpenBSD: passwd.5,v 1.12 2000/01/19 08:33:27 pjanzen Exp $
.\"	$NetBSD: passwd.5,v 1.4 1995/07/28 06:46:05 phil Exp $
.\"
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.\"     @(#)passwd.5	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/5/93
.\"
.Dd July 18, 1995
.Dt PASSWD 5
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm passwd
.Nd format of the password file
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm master.passwd
file, readable only by root, consists of
newline-separated records, one per user, containing ten colon
.Pq Sq \&:
separated fields.  These fields are as follows:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width password -offset indent -compact
.It name
User's login name.
.It password
User's
.Em encrypted
password.
.It uid
User's login user ID.
.It gid
User's login group ID.
.It class
User's general classification (unused).
.It change
Password change time.
.It expire
Account expiration time.
.It gecos
General information about the user.
.It home_dir
User's home directory.
.It shell
User's login shell.
.El
.Pp
The publically-readable
.Nm
file is generated from the
.Nm master.passwd
file by
.Xr pwd_mkdb 8
and has the class, change, and expire fields removed.  Also, the encrypted
password field is replaced by an asterisk
.Pq Sq \&* .
.Pp
The
.Ar name
field is the login used to access the computer account, and the
.Ar uid
field is the number associated with it.  They should both be unique
across the system (and often across a group of systems) since they
control file access.
.Pp
While it is possible to have multiple entries with identical login names
and/or identical user IDs, it is usually a mistake to do so.  Routines
that manipulate these files will often return only one of the multiple
entries, and that one by random selection.
.Pp
The login name must never begin with a hyphen
.Pq Sq \&- ;
also, it is strongly
suggested that neither uppercase characters nor dots
.Pq Sq \&.
be part
of the name, as this tends to confuse mailers.  No field may contain a
colon
.Pq Sq \&:
as this has been used historically to separate the fields
in the user database.
.Pp
The password field is the
.Em encrypted
form of the password.
If the
.Ar password
field is empty, no password will be required to gain access to the
machine.  This is almost invariably a mistake.
Because
.Nm master.passwd
contains the encrypted user passwords, it should
not be readable by anyone without appropriate privileges.
.Pp
Which type of cipher is used to encrypt the password information
depends on the configuration in
.Xr passwd.conf 5 .
It can be different for local and YP passwords.
.Pp
The
.Ar group
field is the group that the user will be placed in upon login.
Since this system supports multiple groups (see
.Xr groups 1 )
this field currently has little special meaning.
.Pp
The
.Ar class
field is currently unused.  In the near future it will be a key to
a
.Xr termcap 5
style database of user attributes.
.Pp
The
.Ar change
field is the number in seconds,
.Dv GMT ,
from the epoch, until the
password for the account must be changed.
This field may be left empty to turn off the password aging feature.
.Pp
The
.Ar expire
field is the number in seconds,
.Dv GMT ,
from the epoch, until the
account expires.
This field may be left empty to turn off the account aging feature.
.Pp
The
.Ar gecos
field normally contains comma-separated subfields as follows:
.Pp
.Bl -tag -width office -offset indent -compact
.It name
User's full name.
.It office
User's office location.
.It wphone
User's work phone number.
.It hphone
User's home phone number.
.El
.Pp
The full name may contain an ampersand
.Pq Sq \&& ,
which will be replaced by the capitalized login name when the gecos field
is displayed or used by various programs such as
.Xr finger 1 ,
.Xr sendmail 8 ,
etc.
.Pp
The office and phone number subfields, if they exist, are used by the
.Xr finger 1
program and possibly by other applications.
.Pp
The user's home directory is the full
.Tn UNIX
path name where the user
will be placed on login.
.Pp
The
.Ar shell
field is the command interpreter the user prefers.
If there is nothing in the
.Ar shell
field, the Bourne shell
.Pq Pa /bin/sh
is assumed.
.Sh YP SUPPORT
If YP is active, the
.Nm
file also supports standard YP exclusions and inclusions, based on user
names and netgroups.
.Pp
Lines beginning with a
.Dq \&-
(minus sign) are entries marked as being excluded
from any following inclusions, which are marked with a
.Dq +
(plus sign).
.Pp
If the second character of the line is a
.Dq @
(at sign), the operation
involves the user fields of all entries in the netgroup specified by the
remaining characters of the
.Ar name
field.
Otherwise, the remainder of the
.Ar name
field is assumed to be a specific user name.
.Pp
The
.Dq +
token may also be alone in the
.Ar name
field, which causes all users from the
.Pa passwd.byname
and
.Pa passwd.byuid
YP maps to be included.
.Pp
If the entry contains non-empty
.Ar uid
or
.Ar gid
fields, the specified numbers will override the information retrieved
from the YP maps. As well, if the
.Ar gecos ,
.Ar dir
or
.Ar shell
entries contain text, it will override the information included via YP.
On some systems, the
.Ar passwd
field may also be overridden.  It is recommended that the standard
way to enable YP passwd support in
.Pa /etc/master.passwd
is:
.Pp
+:*::::::::
.Pp
which after
.Xr pwd_mkdb 8
will result in
.Pa /etc/passwd
containing:
.Pp
+:*:0:0:::
.Pp
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr chpass 1 ,
.Xr login 1 ,
.Xr passwd 1 ,
.Xr getpwent 3 ,
.Xr netgroup 5 ,
.Xr passwd.conf 5 ,
.Xr adduser 8 ,
.Xr pwd_mkdb 8 ,
.Xr vipw 8 ,
.Xr yp 8
.Pp
.%T "Managing NFS and NIS"
(O'Reilly & Associates)
.Sh BUGS
User information should (and eventually will) be stored elsewhere.
.Pp
Placing YP exclusions in the file after any inclusions will have
unexpected results.
.Sh COMPATIBILITY
The password file format has changed since
.Bx 4.3 .
The following
.Xr awk
script can be used to convert your old-style password
file into a new style password file.
The additional fields
.Dq class ,
.Dq change
and
.Dq expire
are added, but are turned off by default.
.Ar class
is currently not implemented, but
.Ar change
and
.Ar expire
are; to set them,
use the current day in seconds from the epoch plus the number of seconds
of offset desired.
.Bd -literal -offset indent
BEGIN { FS = ":"}
{ print $1 ":" $2 ":" $3 ":" $4 "::0:0:" $5 ":" $6 ":" $7 }
.Ed
.Sh HISTORY
A
.Nm
file format appeared in
.At v6 .
.Pp
The YP file format first appeared in SunOS.