passwd
Hurricane Electric Internet Services
NAME
passwd - password file
DESCRIPTION
Passwd is an ASCII file which contains a list of the sys-
tem's users and the passwords they must use for access.
The password file should have read access for everyone,
which is ok because of the encryption, but write access
only for the superuser. If you create a new login, leave
the password field empty and use passwd(2) to fill it. A
star or something like that in the password field means,
that this user can not login via login(1). If your root
file system is on /dev/ram, you must save a changed pass-
word file to your root file system floppy, before you
shutdown the system and check the access rights. If you
want to create user groups, their GID's must be equal and
there must be an entry in /etc/group, or no group will
exist.
There is one entry per line, and each line has the format:
login_name:passwd:UID:GID:user_name:directory:shell
The field descriptions are:
login_name
the name of the user on the system.
password the encrypted optional user password.
UID the numerical user ID.
GID the numerical group ID for this user.
user_name the (optional) comment field (often a
full user name).
directory the user's $HOME directory.
shell the program to run at login (if empty,
use /bin/sh).
FILES
/etc/passwd
SEE ALSO
passwd(1), login(1), group(5)
Hurricane Electric Internet Services
Copyright (C) 1998
Hurricane Electric.
All Rights Reserved.