Hello out there in unix.com land. I am Cerberus and this is my first post. I am brand new to Unix and i have a quesiton for you all.

Relating to the Unix Password File Setup, what is:

User ID?
Password?

any insite comparing one to the other as far as specifics would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You
Cerberus

Well, as is indicated by their names, UserID is what identifies you to the machine you are logging in to. The Password is a (hopefully) unique string that only the owner of that account should know. This keeps others from logging in to your account.

The Unix password file (/etc/passwd) contains the following fields for each user ->
name:passwd:uid:gid:gecos:dir:shell

* The name is the UserID.

* Password is, well, the password (This is either stored in encrypted form, so that no one can know your password just by looking at this file, or stored in a different file, called 'shadow'. If the password is stored elsewhere, there will be an 'x' in the password field).

* The UID is your UserID - a number unique to your system that identifies you to the computer ( sort of like a hostname like slashdot.org is another name for the IP address 64.28.67.150 ).

* The GID is a GroupID - you can belong to different groups to identify you further.

* GECOS is leftover from the old (you guessed it) GECOS operating system - this give even friendlier information, depending on how it is set up, like your full name, department, office number, phone number, so on...

* The DIR is your home directory - when you log in, this is where you will be, and most likely where you store all of your files.

* The shell field tells the computer what "shell" to use, like ksh, sh, bash, csh, and so on... The shell is what you type into - it "translates" to make the commands you type run. It talks (pretty much) directly to the core of the Operating System.

Anyhow, this now concludes the short passwd tutorial. Hope that helped!

Wow! I am extreamly impressed. That was an outstanding answer, honestly more than I thought I would get. You have my never ending gratitude. That was consise and even more so to the point and extreamly educational. Thank you very much LivinFree.



Cerberus