Depending on your site policy, you can store user account and group information in a name service or a local system's /etc files. In the NIS+ name service, information is stored in tables, and in the NIS name service, information is stored in maps.
To avoid confusion, the location of the user account and group information will be generically referred to as a file rather than a file, table, or map.
Most of the user account information is stored in the passwd file. However, password encryption and password aging is stored in the passwd file when using NIS or NIS+ and in the /etc/shadow file when using /etc files. Password aging is not available when using NIS.
Group information is stored in the group file.
The fields in the passwd file are separated by colons and contain the following information:
username:password:uid:gid:comment:home-directory:login-shell |
For example:
kryten:x:101:100:Kryten Series 4000:/export/home/kryten:/bin/csh |
Table 1-6 describes the passwd file fields.
Table 1-6 Fields in the passwd File
Field Name |
Description |
---|---|
Contains the user or login name. User names should be unique and consist of 1-8 letters (A-Z, a-z) and numerals (0-9). The first character must be a letter, and at least one character must be a lowercase letter. User names cannot contain underscores or spaces. |
|
Contains an x, a placeholder for the encrypted password. The encrypted password is stored in the shadow file. |
|
Contains a user identification (UID) number that identifies the user to the system. UID numbers for regular users should range from 100 to 60000. All UID numbers should be unique. |
|
Contains a group identification (GID) number that identifies the user's primary group. Each GID number must be a whole number between 0 and 60002 (60001 and 60002 are assigned to nobody and noaccess, respectively). |
|
Usually contains the full name of the user. (This field is informational only.) It is sometimes called the GECOS field because it was originally used to hold the login information needed to submit batch jobs to a mainframe running GECOS (General Electric Computer Operating System) from UNIX systems at Bell Labs. |
|
Contains user's home directory path name. |
|
Contains the user's default login shell, which can be /bin/sh, /bin/csh or /bin/ksh. Table 1-11 contains a description of shell features. |
The fields in the shadow file are separated by colons and contain the following information:
username:password:lastchg:min:max:warn:inactive:expire |
For example:
rimmer:86Kg/MNT/dGu.:8882:0::5:20:8978 |
Table 1-7 describes the shadow file fields.
Table 1-7 Fields in the shadow File
The fields in the group file are separated by colons and contain the following information:
group-name:group-password:gid:user-list |
For example:
bin::2:root,bin,daemon |
Table 1-8 describes the group file fields.
Table 1-8 Fields in the group File
By default, all Solaris 7 systems have these groups:
root::0:root other::1: bin::2:root,bin,daemon sys::3:root,bin,sys,adm adm::4:root,adm,daemon uucp::5:root,uucp mail::6:root tty::7:root,tty,adm lp::8:root,lp,adm nuucp::9:root,nuucp staff::10: daemon::12:root,daemon sysadmin::14: nobody::60001: noaccess::60002: nogroup::65534: |