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passwd - password file
/etc/passwd
The passwd file contains basic information about each user's account. It
contains a one-line entry for each authorized user, of the form:
username:password:uid:gid:gcos-field:home_directory:login_shell
Required Fields:
- username
- The user's login name, not more than eight characters.
- password
- The user's password, in an encrypted form that is generated
by the UNIX passwd function. However, if the encypted password
is stored in /etc/shadow, (see shadow(5)), the password
field of /etc/passwd is empty.
- uid
- A unique interger assigned by the UNIX administrator to
represent the user's account; its value is usually between 0
and 32767.
- gid
- An interger representing the group to which the user has
been assigned. Groups are created by the UNIX system administrator;
each is assigned a unique integer whose value
is generally between 0 and 32767.
gcos-field The user's real name. The name may be of any length; it may
include capital letters as well as lower case, and may include
blanks. The name may be empty.
home_directory The user's home directory. The home directory field may be
empty.
login-shell The default shell launched at login. This field may be empty.
Here is a sample passwd file when the /etc/shadow does not exist:
root:bDPu/ys5PBoYU:0:1:Operator:/:/bin/csh
dave:Qs5I6pBb2rJDA:1234:12:David:/u/dave:/bin/csh
dan:MNRWDsW/srMfE:2345:23:Dan::
jim:HNRyuuiuMFerx:::::
If the system keeps the passwords in the /etc/shadow, the file /etc/passwd
would be exactly the same but the password field would be empty.
root::0:1:Operator:/:/bin/csh
dave::1234:12:David:/u/dave:/bin/csh
dan::2345:23:Dan::
jim::::::
na_shadow(5), na_options(1), na_nis(8), na_pcnfsd(8), na_nsswitch.conf(5),
na_quota(1), na_cifs_access(1), na_cifs_setup(1)
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