shadow(4)

NAME | DESCRIPTION | FILES | SEE ALSO | NOTES

NAME

shadow– shadow password file

DESCRIPTION

/etc/shadow is an access-restricted ASCII system file that stores users' encrypted passwords and related information. The shadow file can be used in conjunction with other shadow sources, including the NIS maps passwd.byname and passwd.byuid and the NIS+ table passwd. Programs use the getspnam(3C) routines to access this information.

The fields for each user entry are separated by colons. Each user is separated from the next by a newline. Unlike the /etc/passwd file, /etc/shadow does not have general read permission.

Each entry in the shadow file has the form:

---

username:password:lastchg: min:max:warn: inactive:expire:flag

---

The fields are defined as follows:

username

The user's login name (UID).

password

An encrypted password for the user generated by crypt(3C), a lock string to indicate that the login is not accessible, or no string, which shows that there is no password for the login.

The lock string is defined as *LK* in the first four characters of the password field.

lastchg

The number of days between January 1, 1970, and the date that the password was last modified.

min

The minimum number of days required between password changes.

max

The maximum number of days the password is valid.

warn

The number of days before password expires that the user is warned.

inactive

The number of days of inactivity allowed for that user. This is counted on a per-machine basis; the information about the last login is taken from the machine's lastlog file.

expire

An absolute date specifying when the login may no longer be used.

flag

Reserved for future use, set to zero. Currently not used.

The encrypted password consists of 13 characters chosen from a 64-character alphabet (., /, 0-9, A-Z, a-z). To update this file, use the passwd(1), useradd(1M), usermod(1M), or userdel(1M) commands.

In order to make system administration manageable, /etc/shadow entries should appear in exactly the same order as /etc/passwd entries; this includes ``+'' and ``-'' entries if the compat source is being used (see nsswitch.conf(4)).

FILES

/etc/shadow

shadow password file

/etc/passwd

password file

/etc/nsswitch.conf

name-service switch configuration file

/var/adm/lastlog

time of last login

SEE ALSO

login(1), passwd(1), useradd(1M), userdel(1M), usermod(1M), crypt(3C), crypt_gensalt(3C), getspnam(3C), putspent(3C), nsswitch.conf(4), passwd(4)

NOTES

If password aging is turned on in any name service the passwd: line in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file must have a format specified in the nsswitch.conf(4) man page.

If the /etc/nsswitch.conf passwd policy is not in one of the supported formats, logins will not be allowed upon password expiration because the software does not know how to handle password updates under these conditions. See nsswitch.conf(4) for additional information.

SunOS 5.9  Last Revised 12 Sep 2002

NAME | DESCRIPTION | FILES | SEE ALSO | NOTES