NAME

passwd, master.passwd — the account database

DESCRIPTION

The file /etc/master.passwd, readable only by the superuser, holds one line per account with ten fields separated by colons:

name:password:uid:gid:class:change:expire:gecos:home:shell

name

The login name.

password

The crypt(3) hash of the password. Empty means no password is needed; a hash beginning with ‘*’ or ‘!’ locks the account.

uid, gid

The user and primary group IDs.

class

The login class in login.conf(5).

change

The time, in seconds since the Epoch, by which the password must be changed; 0 for none.

expire

The time, in seconds since the Epoch, at which the account expires; 0 for none.

gecos

The user's full name and similar information.

home

The home directory.

shell

The login shell; empty means /bin/sh.

The public /etc/passwd, readable by everyone, is generated from it by pwd_mkdb(8). It has seven fields, with the password replaced by ‘*’ and the class, change and expire fields left out:

name:*:uid:gid:gecos:home:shell

There is no /etc/shadow. The C library's getspnam(3) reads /etc/master.passwd, reporting the change time as the day the password was last changed with a maximum age of 0, and the expire time as the account's expiry day.

FILES

/etc/master.passwd

 

/etc/passwd

 

SEE ALSO

login(1), passwd(1), crypt(3), getpwent(3), login.conf(5), pwd_mkdb(8)

HISTORY

A passwd file format appeared in Version 1 AT&T UNIX. master.passwd appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno.