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Date:      Fri, 2 Mar 2001 15:14:46 -0700
From:      Peter <fbsdq@yahoo.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Clarification on passwd / master.passwd / spwd.db / pwd.db
Message-ID:  <SAK.2001.03.02.qipijapo@support10>

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. . . .|/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 <fbsdq@yahoo.com> 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
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