/etc/passwd

I would like to know all values which can appear in the second (password) field. I read the man(5) passwd but it doesn't list all the possibilities.

So far I have:

a hashed password
* - means you can login to an administrative account
x - passwords are stored in the /etc/shadow
nothing - no password required

Any other possibilities?

Is there a difference between Unix/Linux and Solaris?

Thanks in advance.

Don't know if you count FreeBSD in there, but if a password is shadowed into the master.passwd file it shows an * in the /etc/passwd.

Interesting. I'm sure there are more of them but I can't find any informations.

First is the username

Second is the hashed passwd or a splat if using shadow passwds

Third User ID you can change these, just remember 0 is ROOT

Fourth is Group ID even though a person can belong to several groups the only one here should be the native group

Fifth is the information returned by finger

Sixth Users Home Dir

Seventh is shell type

I think thats all there is. Is this what you question was, or did I miss the point?

Thanks cow but you missed the point. I was asking what values can appear in the second column not what all the columns represent.

If you want to disable an account, can you do it in /etc/passwd? I heard you can use an exclamation mark in the second column for this purpose. I will have to try it.

One way to disable a user is by a baseball bat. This usally results in jail time so I would just use 'userdel'

lol


I tried the exclamation mark and it works. The user isn't able to login.