pwck8pwckverify integrity of password filespwck-sr passwdshadowDESCRIPTIONpwck verifies the integrity of the system
authentication information. All entries in the
/etc/passwd and /etc/shadow
are checked to see that the entry has the proper format and valid data
in each field. The user is prompted to delete entries that are
improperly formatted or which have other uncorrectable errors.
Checks are made to verify that each entry has:the correct number of fieldsa unique user namea valid user and group identifiera valid primary group a valid home directorya valid login shellThe checks for correct number of fields and unique user name are
fatal. If the entry has the wrong number of fields, the user will be
prompted to delete the entire line. If the user does not answer
affirmatively, all further checks are bypassed. An entry with a
duplicated user name is prompted for deletion, but the remaining
checks will still be made. All other errors are warning and the user
is encouraged to run the usermod command to correct
the error.
The commands which operate on the
/etc/passwd file are not able to alter corrupted
or duplicated entries. pwck should be used in
those circumstances to remove the offending entry.
OPTIONS
By default, pwck operates on the files
/etc/passwd and /etc/shadow.
The user may select alternate files with the passwd and shadow
parameters. Additionally, the user may execute the command in
read-only mode by specifying the flag. This causes
all questions regarding changes to be answered no without user intervention.
pwck can also sort entries in
/etc/passwd and /etc/shadow
by UID. To run it in sort mode pass it flag. No
checks are performed then, it just sorts.
FILES/etc/groupgroup account information/etc/passwduser account information/etc/shadowsecure user account informationSEE ALSOgroup5,
passwd5,
shadow5,
usermod8EXIT VALUES
The pwck command exits with the following values:
0success1invalid command syntax2one or more bad password entries3can't open password files4can't lock password files5can't update password filesAUTHORJulianne Frances Haugh (jockgrrl@ix.netcom.com)