passwd 5 passwd The password file /etc/passwd contains various pieces of information for each user account. Included is: Login name Optional encrypted password Numerical user ID Numerical group ID User name or comment field User home directory User command interpreter The password field may not be filled if shadow passwords have been enabled. If shadow passwords are being used, the encrypted password will be found in /etc/shadow. The encrypted password consists of characters from the 64 characters alphabet a thru z, A thru Z, 0 thru 9, \. and /. Optionally it can start with a "$" character. This means the encrypted password was generated using another (not DES) algorithm. For example if it starts with "$1$" it means the MD5-based algorithm was used. Refer to crypt3 for details on how this string is interpreted. The comment field is used by various system utilities, such as finger1 . Three additional values may be present in the comment field. They are: pri= - set initial value of nice umask= - set initial value of umask ulimit= - set initial value of ulimit These fields are separated from each other and from any other comment field by a comma. The home directory field provides the name of the initial working directory. Login uses this information to set the value of the $HOME environmental variable. The command interpreter field provides the name of the user's command language interpreter, or the name of the initial program to execute. Login uses this information to set the value of the $SHELL environmental variable. If this field is empty, it defaults to the value /bin/sh. /etc/passwd user account information login1 , passwd1 , su1 , shadow5 , pwconv8 , pwunconv8 , sulogin8 Julianne Frances Haugh (jockgrrl@ix.netcom.com)