Dr Andrew Scott
G7VAV
Senior Lecturer
School of Computing
and Communications
D35 InfoLab21
Lancaster University
Lancaster, LA1 4WA
United Kingdom
School of Computing
and Communications
D35 InfoLab21
Lancaster University
Lancaster, LA1 4WA
United Kingdom
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UPDATE-PASSWD
Section: Maintenance Commands (8)Updated: Debian tools
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NAME
update-passwd - safely update /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow and /etc/groupSYNOPSIS
update-passwd [options]DESCRIPTION
update-passwd handles updates of /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow and /etc/group on running Debian systems. It compares the current files to master copies, distributed in the base-passwd package, and updates all entries in the global system range (that is, 0-99).OPTIONS
update-passwd follows the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes ('-').- -p, --passwd-master=FILE
- Use FILE as the master copy of the passwd database. The default value is /usr/share/base-passwd/passwd.master.
- -g, --group-master=FILE
- Use FILE as the master copy of the group database. The default value is /usr/share/base-passwd/group.master.
- -P, --passwd=FILE
- Use FILE as the system passwd database. The default value is /etc/passwd.
- -S, --shadow=FILE
- Use FILE as the system shadow database. The default value is /etc/shadow.
- -G, --group=FILE
- Use FILE as the system group database. The default value is /etc/group.
- -s, --sanity-check
- Only perform sanity-checks but don't do anything.
- -v, --verbose
- Give detailed information about what we are doing. A second -v gives additional detail.
- -n, --dry-run
- Don't do anything but only show what we would do.
- -L, --no-locking
- Don't attempt to lock the account database. This should only be used for debugging purposes. I repeat: do not do this unless you are really sure you need this!
- -h, --help
- Show a summary of how to use update-passwd.
- -V, --version
- Show the version number
BUGS
At this moment update-passwd does not verify the shadow-file. It should check if the entries in the passwd are also in shadow and vice versa, and that passwords are not present in both files.AUTHOR
Wichert Akkerman <wakkerma@debian.org>This program was written for the Debian project, and is copyright 1999-2002 Wichert Akkerman and copyright 2002, 2003 Colin Watson. It is distributed under version 2 of the GNU General Public License.
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