From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Mar 2 14:13:52 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from smtp010.mail.yahoo.com (smtp010.mail.yahoo.com [216.136.173.30]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 4BE4A37B719 for ; Fri, 2 Mar 2001 14:13:47 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from fbsdq@yahoo.com) Received: from h2.impactidealsolutions.com (HELO support10) (216.98.200.91) by smtp.mail.vip.sc5.yahoo.com with SMTP; 2 Mar 2001 22:13:46 -0000 X-Apparently-From: Message-Id: Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 15:14:46 -0700 X-Priority: 3 From: Peter X-Mailer: Mail Warrior To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Subject: Re: Clarification on passwd / master.passwd / spwd.db / pwd.db Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit X-Mailer-Version: v3.57 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG . . . .|/etc/passwd is maintained because some pieces of third-party software . . . .|(and some people) expect to find user names from there, even though Another question: If the file /etc/passwd is not necessary anymore, lets say I get rid of it, how else do I find the user accounts that exist on the system without "cat /etc/passwd"? . o O (I dont' think linux/solaris 8 uses the hashed passwd tables, just first time I see these [but then again I've only used Solaris and Linux]) On 03/02/2001 12:27:53 PM, Lowell Gilbert is quoted as saying: . . . .|Peter writes: . . . .| . . . .|> I know everything about shadowed passwords etc, my question . . . .|> is......give me examples on what program uses the .db files and what . . . .|> use the plaintext password files, and why? . . . .| . . . .|Pretty much nothing uses /etc/passwd. /etc/master.passwd is the . . . .|source for building the hashed databases, so it's the canonical . . . .|correct set of data, but it's not used for lookups. . . . .| . . . .|/etc/passwd is maintained because some pieces of third-party software . . . .|(and some people) expect to find user names from there, even though . . . .|that was already deprecated by Version 7 UNIX and it's probably been . . . .|20 years since any Unixish system *didn't* have getpwent(3) and its kin. . . . .| . . . .|> btw. Thanks for the "pwd_mkdb", I was looking for that. . . . .| . . . .|You're welcome; you could have found it yourself with "apropos password". . . . .| . . . .|Be well. www.nul.cjb.net www.FreeBSD.org _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message