Understanding /etc/passwd File Format

by nixCraft on February 22, 2006 · 79 comments· last updated at November 21, 2011

Can you explain /etc/passwd file format for Linux and UNIX operating systems?

/etc/passwd file stores essential information, which is required during login i.e. user account information. /etc/passwd is a text file, that contains a list of the system's accounts, giving for each account some useful information like user ID, group ID, home directory, shell, etc. It should have general read permission as many utilities, like ls use it to map user IDs to user names, but write access only for the superuser (root).

Understanding fields in /etc/passwd

The /etc/passwd contains one entry per line for each user (or user account) of the system. All fields are separated by a colon (:) symbol. Total seven fields as follows.

Generally, passwd file entry looks as follows (click to enlarge image):

(Fig.01: /etc/passwd file format - click to enlarge)

Username: It is used when user logs in. It should be between 1 and 32 characters in length.
Password: An x character indicates that encrypted password is stored in /etc/shadow file.
User ID (UID): Each user must be assigned a user ID (UID). UID 0 (zero) is reserved for root and UIDs 1-99 are reserved for other predefined accounts. Further UID 100-999 are reserved by system for administrative and system accounts/groups.
Group ID (GID): The primary group ID (stored in /etc/group file)
User ID Info: The comment field. It allow you to add extra information about the users such as user's full name, phone number etc. This field use by finger command.
Home directory: The absolute path to the directory the user will be in when they log in. If this directory does not exists then users directory becomes /
Command/shell: The absolute path of a command or shell (/bin/bash). Typically, this is a shell. Please note that it does not have to be a shell.

Task: See User List

/etc/passwd is only used for local users only. To see list of all users, enter:
$ cat /etc/passwd
To search for a username called tom, enter:
$ grep tom /etc/passwd

/etc/passwd file permission

The permission on the /etc/passwd file should be read only to users (-rw-r--r--) and the owner must be root:
$ ls -l /etc/passwd
Output:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2659 Sep 17 01:46 /etc/passwd

Reading /etc/passwd file

You can read /etc/passwd file using the while loop and IFS separator as follows:

#!/bin/bash
# seven fields from /etc/passwd stored in $f1,f2...,$f7
# 
while IFS=: read -r f1 f2 f3 f4 f5 f6 f7
do
 echo "User $f1 use $f7 shell and stores files in $f6 directory."
done < /etc/passwd

Your password is stored in /etc/shadow file

Your encrpted password is not stored in /etc/passwd file. It is stored in /etc/shadow file. In the good old days there was no great problem with this general read permission. Everybody could read the encrypted passwords, but the hardware was too slow to crack a well-chosen password, and moreover, the basic assumption used to be that of a friendly user-community.

Almost, all modern Linux / UNIX line operating systems use some sort of the shadow password suite, where /etc/passwd has asterisks (*) instead of encrypted passwords, and the encrypted passwords are in /etc/shadow which is readable by the superuser only.

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{ 79 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Ruwan.gawarammana February 19, 2007 at 6:47 am

What are the differences between system calls and Library functions?

2 marwen June 2, 2011 at 10:54 am: - system call is a call of a service to be done by the kernel, it’s executed in the kernel address space.
- a library function call is done by “importing” (linking) the (library/function) code to the user’s program, and it’s executed in the user address space.
Reply

3 surya March 12, 2007 at 9:28 am

What is the need for /etc/shadow file, when there is /etc/shadow file?

Can the password be maintained in /etc/paswd file itself?

please tell me why Developers implemented two files /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow/

4 Vikas November 1, 2010 at 11:36 am: Actually the Passwd stored in the etc/shadow is the exact password which is encrypted and also the developer haven’t implemented two files the /etc/passwd is the symbolik link to the /etc/shadow
Reply

5 Gabe March 14, 2007 at 8:30 pm

surya – There may be other reasons, but one reason is that the /etc/shadow file is not readable by any user except root. Whereas the /etc/passwd has legitimate reasons to be read by other users. Even though the passwords can be encrypted directly in /etc/passwd, that is still less secure than have even the encrypted passwords hidden.

6 Bill October 1, 2007 at 2:17 am

I have been asked to create a new user on an HP-UX 7.05 machine circa 1990.

Editing the /etc/admin file in Motif to add my user account resulted in that user having denied access. the user name was as added as a user to /etc/groups. I used a new UID fot the user.

Any clues as to what i did wrong?

Thanks

7 Bill October 1, 2007 at 2:19 am

That was /etc/passwd

8 Praveen February 26, 2008 at 9:31 pm

First let me tell tht i am newbie into the linux arena.

Please educate me how uupdated pwds of the users are been changed in /etc/shadow which has only read perminssions

Praveen Joy.

9 Jenny Oscar May 14, 2008 at 1:45 am

What does it mean if the password (2nd field) leaves blank or shows as “*”? Thanks.

10 sunil Meher December 9, 2011 at 6:34 pm: If the second field in /etc/passwd file is set with “*” then the password is disabled for the respective user
Reply

11 Gerald F. McMullen June 4, 2008 at 3:39 pm

In the ETC/Passwd file what functionality are the five accounts used for : Shutdown, Sync, Halt, News and Netdump ? Are these logins or are they just command files? And why don’t they have a Nologin at the end of their paths?

Thanks Jerry

12 vivek June 4, 2008 at 3:46 pm

nologin is shell which displays a message that an account is not available. It is intended as a replacement shell field for accounts that have been disabled or only use by system internally.

13 DG12 July 10, 2008 at 9:33 pm

In general the /etc/password and associated shadow files are very *nix dependent. ( AIX, HP-UX, linux… )

Praveen: passwords are updated by the passwd command.

Jenny: the star in the password field means “password is in shadow file”. If the password filed is null ( i.e. :: ) account is not passworded (bad)!

14 Charity October 16, 2008 at 5:46 pm

Similar to Jenny’s question… what if the second field (password) in the /etc/passwd file is “*” but the /etc/shadow file is not in use?

15 lida November 7, 2008 at 6:36 pm

how to line for only ftp user?
example
user:x:1000:(www-data id):(?):(?)
is true?

16 Martin December 10, 2008 at 12:54 pm

Hi, a am migrating from Solaris 8 to Solaris 10, and i have a lot of users that i want to migrate. Is there a quick way to do this not by hand one by one?
I was thinking that maybe copying the /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow and /etc/group files would do the job?

17 Vivek Gite December 10, 2008 at 3:04 pm

Please see this faq about migrating user accounts.

18 viola December 15, 2008 at 9:19 am

how to read the password and compair it with the one that is in the /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow

19 sparta_tushar December 18, 2008 at 9:03 am

anybody knows how to expire user’s password whos entry is there in /etc/passwd file

20 Vivek Gite December 18, 2008 at 9:28 am

@sparta_tushar,

Use chage command.

21 Nadeem January 27, 2009 at 11:50 am

Kindly define all 7th points beriefly like Username Password UID GID Comments Home Directory Shell with respect of /etc/passwd File

22 Nadeem January 27, 2009 at 11:51 am

Any one can aswer …..kindly do ASAP

23 Volker February 6, 2009 at 12:24 am

If any of you have access to root than you wouldn’t be asking how to view/expire/delete, etc the password in the shadow file. There is absolutely no need to if you are root. If you want to expire a password it would be more efficient to su into the user (of course assuming you are root), and passwd yourself your own password. Again, there is no need to see an encrypted password for whatever reason. Just by glancing at the things some of you want to do makes me wonder whether you guys are either trying to hack into someone’s account, or play a prank on them, etc…

24 dht March 3, 2009 at 11:00 am

pleas tel me in what format passwords are stored in shadow file?means i want ask you that what encryption is used in shadow file to store password?

25 pappu April 6, 2009 at 10:52 am

thanks

26 amar April 26, 2009 at 6:36 am

nice notes for engg students

27 turkan July 30, 2009 at 8:22 am

Hi,
We are using solaris 10 on jumpstart. We have tried to change the passwrod for root since we have forgotten it. But know the system cannot find user root.
Can you help us to recreate root user? Is there anyway?
Thanks.

28 Alex August 18, 2009 at 5:03 pm

I have a question about the /etc/passwd file

I have a number of users accessing a system and while my security is very good by use of firewall and strict permissions on all files I would like to stop users from viewing the /etc/passwd file purely because I don’t want my clients to know who my other clients are.

Is there any way, other than using chroot to do this?

29 sunil Meher December 9, 2011 at 6:42 pm: we can change the permission of the file /etc/passwd using the command chmod
Reply

30 vipin August 20, 2009 at 4:01 pm

thanks sir

31 vipin August 20, 2009 at 5:52 pm

sir tell me predefined accounts
for example

32 Dennis August 20, 2009 at 10:58 pm

Alex:
There are several reasons that the /etc/password file is read all.
Most expect a cooperative community of users.

There are many other issues you need to address to prevent users from knowing who other users are. like ls /home

It would seem that your users have telnet access. Have you looked into “jail” shell.
or removing shell access to from your users.

PS since this is much more complected that /etc/password please start a new thread.

33 Dennis August 20, 2009 at 11:02 pm

Vipin:
To see predefined users for the distribution you are using (they are all different)
see /etc/passwd however
note that users like like nobody, daemon, have user numbers below 100
may have the default shell of something like /usr/bin/false which prevents these users from logging in.

34 ashwini September 4, 2009 at 5:20 am

hi sir i want file access permission by using simble -c,b,c,i,p and s

35 prakar September 22, 2009 at 6:51 am

Application crashes on solaris if there is an empty line at the end of /etc/passwd, Please let me know why this happens.

36 Atif Zaka October 6, 2009 at 7:07 am

Can any one explain below mentioned entry? Is it ok to remove or its kind a wild card?

?:x:60020:1::/home/?:/bin/sh

37 Dennis October 6, 2009 at 11:19 pm

Although you have not mentioned what system you are seeing this on,
I believe this is an error on the part of someone who tried to mkuser

38 shrik November 4, 2009 at 1:21 pm

I have a question about the /etc/passwd file:

Usually a normal user do not have direct permission to write in a passwd/shadow file.

Though when user changes his passsword then ultimately he is altering the /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow file.

What is the mechanism behind this?

39 DG12 November 5, 2009 at 7:58 pm

Notice that the command to change your password is
-r-sr-xr-x 1 root wheel 70352 Jun 18 22:39 /usr/bin/passwd
Owned by root and the s in the permissions is the SETUID bit.
This means that, when you run this program, your User ID is set to root,
and since root is the owner of the /etc/passwd you can update it!
The same it true of:
at, atq, atrm, batch, chfn, chpass, chsh, crontab, cu, ipcs, login,
lppasswd, newgrp, quota, rlogin, rsh, su, sudo, top, uucp,
uuname, uustat, uux

40 Paul November 13, 2009 at 2:25 pm

My hosting company expects me to SSH using password authentication (rather than key) . I have edited ssh_config and sshd_config to switch passwordauthentication to yes, but do I need somehow to get the password into the shadow file – the server response does not even prompt me for a password – it just refuses the connect attempt.

41 ABDUL AWAL December 4, 2009 at 12:35 am

can u explain how the /etc/shadow and /etc/passwd directories are used in the authentication process?why are they two files used instead of one?how can i convert a system to use the /etc//shadow file to the store password?

thanks

42 ABDUL AWAL December 4, 2009 at 12:38 am

an example of absolute pathname is shown as: /home/student/myprogs while a relative pathname can be shown as : ../../documents what are differences between absolute and relative pathname and what is advantages.

43 DG12 December 4, 2009 at 3:31 pm

ABDUL AWAL: Pease read paragraph “Your password is stored in /etc/shadow file”

44 DG12 December 4, 2009 at 3:35 pm

ABDUL AWAL: Assuming you are referring to the above:
“#6 Home directory: The absolute path to the directory the user will be in when they log in….”
I seems unwise to use a relative path in the /etc/passwd file.

45 SARDAR GHULAM HAIDER KHAN NAWABI December 29, 2009 at 6:55 pm

i say just thanks to every user of linux to every teacher of linux to every lover of linux
please send easy note easy commands of linux to me i will be pray for u are
just send good and easy way to improve my linux knowledge

46 Raj January 28, 2010 at 12:27 am

Excellent work dude…. Thanks..

47 vivek kandath March 2, 2010 at 11:55 am

i don’t understand what is the setting s -bit and t- bit ??????
why it is relevant???

48 AlexP April 8, 2010 at 8:06 am

What if two users have the same UID and GID?

49 DG12 April 8, 2010 at 3:25 pm

Then they ARE the SAME user!

50 AlexP April 8, 2010 at 8:52 pm

Actually I have learned that they are not the same user. In fact they can have separate home directories as well as passwords so they’re not the same.

51 DG12 April 8, 2010 at 10:28 pm

ALexP,
Your are correct.
In addition to the password and home directories being unique, the UserId and command/shell are unique.

They are the same user with regard to file ownership as this is done by UID and GID.

Other authorizations like sudoers (who can execute what “priveledged commands” usually restricted to the SUper user ) have both username and UID as options for the user.

ftpd users a separate authorization scheme only by username.
mail is also username (not UID) dependent.
findgerd, talk, write, who all seem to use username.

So I guess the real answer is … depends!

52 Sandeep April 15, 2010 at 8:49 am

Hi,

I just wanted to know that how do I identify that a user is locked on the following OS
1) Linux: Is it gauranteed to be a single exclamation mark (!) before the encrypted password in shadow file across all flavours of linux
2) Solaris: I am aware that it also has a shadow file. But want to confirm whther ! is the token for locked user
3) HP-UX: What is the token
4) AIX: AIX doesn’t has any shadow file. How do I come to know who all users are locked like I can do by reading /etcshadow file on other platforms.

53 Sanjay Katiyar June 9, 2010 at 8:11 am

Why there is another file (in Fedora)
/etc/passwd-

54 manan June 17, 2010 at 1:17 pm: Not in fedora but also in Redhat ,Its for backup purpose ,if the /etc/passwd file is modified somehow , then it can be backed up from /etc/passwd-
Reply

55 Brian June 29, 2010 at 9:02 am

Hi, every time when i change or reset user’s password it also changed the permissions in /etc/shadow which deny or lock-out database user’s, this is very risky as i’m working in a production server. could you please help.

56 himanshu August 3, 2010 at 6:12 pm

hi
I am new to unix.If passwords are stored into /etc/shadow file and this file is readable by super user only then how user are log in into system i.e they must have access to password file for matching password .plz help me

57 internet trgovine September 20, 2010 at 5:10 pm

Thank you for this informative post. Just what i have needed to understand login relation with passwd. Also well written users with a lack of unix knowledge.

Best one so far, keep it up!

58 kris October 18, 2010 at 7:54 pm

List from the /etc/passwd the UID and the user having the highest UID

59 Bel November 4, 2010 at 6:42 pm

Dear site owner,

Thanks for nice site! Keep it updated ;)

60 John E January 6, 2011 at 9:57 pm

How do I change my user account password on my computer? I am using linux a friend put it on my computer for me but I wish to chage the password and dont know how to do it? can anyone help me?

61 DG12 January 7, 2011 at 11:33 pm

“I wish to change it” seeks to indicate that you can log on.
use
passwd

You will be prompted for your current password.
This prevents someone else from changing your password if you walked away and were still logged in.

Detailed info on your system is in the man pages since different versions of *unix are different in their requirements.

man passwd

62 jitender March 12, 2011 at 12:14 am

Very nice and usefull information

thanks a lot

I appriciate this one..
Blessings…

63 badhan March 27, 2011 at 12:29 pm

what is pico in linux

64 DG12 May 3, 2011 at 12:15 pm: pico is a little tiny editor.
nano is even littler and tinyer editor
Reply

65 gunjankapoor May 3, 2011 at 9:54 am

The is a id thru which i can login but when i check it in /etc/passwd, its not there.
Any one knows the reason?

66 DG12 May 3, 2011 at 12:18 pm: What flavor of unix are you using? linux, bsd darwin (Mac) aix hpux …
What distribution are your using?
Reply

67 laka June 21, 2011 at 9:52 pm

how can i generate that encrypted passwds …

means i want to assign a passwd to a user eg. laka is qwerty

then how can i encrypt dis string(qwerty)

as i want to make a entry of dis encrypted passwd in the shadow file manually…

plzz help me out… :)

68 blaze October 17, 2011 at 11:39 am

A user can change his own password.. That being the case, how does the passwd file which is owned by root, get modified??
I was asked this question in an interview and it left me puzzled. Any ideas people!?

69 Dennis October 17, 2011 at 4:41 pm

Excellent question.
Short answer: While there are slight variations dependent on the specific version of unix the basic approach is the same and has the same answer for many “privileged” operations that can be performed by a user on their own objects.
under redhat-linux-gnu
which passwd displays /usr/bin/passwd
ls -l /usr/bin/passwd
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 27936 Aug 11 2010 /usr/bin/passwd
notice that the password program is owned by root and that the mode (aka permissions) include the “sticky” bit. This causes the password program to have the effective user ID of root when it runs. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setuid

70 blaze October 27, 2011 at 6:07 am: thanks! btb,. I was asked wrt Solaris. I answered the question in an uncertain tone.. “sticky bit”. But the devil’s son smiled as if in mockery.. and i quit answering further. damn that fellow!!
Reply

71 Dennis October 17, 2011 at 4:49 pm

Excellent question.
Short answer: While there are slight variations dependent on the specific version of unix the basic approach is the same and has the same answer for many “privileged” operations that can be performed by a user on their own objects.
under redhat-linux-gnu
which passwd displays /usr/bin/passwd
ls -l /usr/bin/passwd
-rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 27936 Aug 11 2010 /usr/bin/passwd
notice that the password program is owned by root and that the mode (aka permissions) include the “SETUID” bit. This causes the password program to have the effective user ID of root when it runs. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setuid

72 Jurieka November 22, 2011 at 8:25 am

Similar to Jenny’s question… what if the second field (password) in the /etc/passwd file is “*” but the /etc/shadow file is not in use?

73 Jurieka November 22, 2011 at 8:27 am

What does it mean if the second field (password) in the /etc/passwd file is “!” but the /etc/shadow file is not in use and the 7th field is /usr/bin/ksh?

74 Jim January 6, 2012 at 5:40 pm

Anyone know what this means in Linux SLES 11 and can it be removed – audit says it should be there:
[root@imnalx0277 etc]# cat /etc/passwd |grep +
+::::::

75 Jim January 6, 2012 at 5:41 pm

Excuse me – “+” should not be there

76 rameez July 26, 2012 at 4:30 am

Which file stores Group members and User’s Login Shell

77 alan October 11, 2012 at 12:18 am

[framework@[192_168_15_244] framework]$ cat /etc/shadow
root:UbgIcihE85Xz.:10933:0:99999:7:::
daemon:*:10933:0:99999:7:::
bin:*:10933:0:99999:7:::
sys:*:10933:0:99999:7:::
sync:*:10933:0:99999:7:::
operator:*:10933:0:99999:7:::
sshd:*:10933:0:99999:7:::
messagebus:*:10933:0:99999:7:::
nobody:*:10933:0:99999:7:::
default::10933:0:99999:7:::
framework:$1$Cewr2/zS$SnxBS8yTMZeIgf/Tk//Xo/:14033:0:99999:7:::
how to figure out the real password of the account ROOT?

78 Umesh October 12, 2012 at 10:57 am