NAME

       passwd - the password file

DESCRIPTION

       /etc/passwd contains one line for each user account, with seven fields delimited by colons (“:”). These
       fields are:

       •   login name

       •   optional encrypted password

       •   numerical user ID

       •   numerical group ID

       •   user name or comment field

       •   user home directory

       •   optional user command interpreter

       If the password field is a lower-case “x”, then the encrypted password is actually stored in the
       shadow(5) file instead; there must be a corresponding line in the /etc/shadow file, or else the user
       account is invalid.

       The encrypted password field may be empty, in which case no password is required to authenticate as the
       specified login name. However, some applications which read the /etc/passwd file may decide not to permit
       any access at all if the password field is blank.

       A password field which starts with an exclamation mark means that the password is locked. The remaining
       characters on the line represent the password field before the password was locked.

       Refer to crypt(3) for details on how this string is interpreted.

       If the password field contains some string that is not a valid result of crypt(3), for instance ! or *,
       the user will not be able to use a unix password to log in (but the user may log in the system by other
       means).

       The comment field, also known as the gecos field, is used by various system utilities, such as finger(1).
       The use of an ampersand here will be replaced by the capitalised login name when the field is used or
       displayed by such system utilities.

       The home directory field provides the name of the initial working directory. The login program 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. The login program uses this information to set the value of the $SHELL
       environmental variable. If this field is empty, it defaults to the value /bin/sh.

FILES

       /etc/passwd
           User account information.

       /etc/shadow
           optional encrypted password file

       /etc/passwd-
           Backup file for /etc/passwd.

           Note that this file is used by the tools of the shadow toolsuite, but not by all user and password
           management tools.

SEE ALSO

       crypt(3), getent(1), getpwnam(3), login(1), passwd(1), pwck(8), pwconv(8), pwunconv(8), shadow(5), su(1),
       sulogin(8).

shadow-utils 4.13                                  05/30/2024                                          PASSWD(5)