/etc/passwd
This file stores information about users.
username:has_pw:userid:group:comment:homedir:shell
- username
- The user's login name. This can contain any characters except a colon
(
:
), but you should probably avoid any of the shell's special characters. For more information, seeQuoting special characters
in theUsing the Command Line
chapter. - has_pw
This field must be empty or
x
. If x, the user's hashed password is in /etc/shadow.It's not recommended to leave it empty, as it means one of two things, depending on options given to other components: a password is not required to authenticate, or you cannot successfully authenticate.
If the pam_qnx.so PAM module is used for authentication, then it's necessary to use the nullok option for it to permit authentication without a password. Without this option, any attempt to authenticate is disallowed. If nullok is used, authentication when using login or su is permitted without a password. In the case of ssh, the use of nullok with pam_qnx.so is insufficient. You must also set the sshd config option PermitEmptyPasswords to yes.
- userid
- The numeric user ID.
- group
- The numeric group ID.
- comment
- A free-form comment field that usually contains at least the user's real name; this field must not contain a colon.
- homedir
- The user's home directory.
- shell
- The initial command to start after login. The default is
/bin/sh. If you don't want to allow a user to log in, specify the
path to a binary such as false that will exit when run.
Alternatively, you can use a non-existent path such as NO_LOGINS.
Note:You can't provide any arguments to the shell.
fred:x:290:120:Fred L. Jones:/home/fred:/bin/sh