shadow(4)							   File Formats 							 shadow(4)

NAME

       shadow - shadow password file

DESCRIPTION

       /etc/shadow  is	an access-restricted ASCII system file that stores users' encrypted passwords and related information. The shadow file can
       be used in conjunction with other shadow sources, including the NIS maps passwd.byname and passwd.byuid and the NIS+ table passwd. Programs
       use the getspnam(3C) routines to access this information.

       The  fields  for  each  user entry are separated by colons. Each user is separated from the next by a newline. Unlike the /etc/passwd file,
       /etc/shadow does not have general read permission.

       Each entry in the shadow file has the form:

	 username:password:lastchg:min:max:warn:inactive:expire:flag

       The fields are defined as follows:

       username    The user's login name (UID).

       password    An encrypted password for the user generated by crypt(3C), a lock string to indicate that the login is not  accessible,  or	no
		   string, which shows that there is no password for the login.

		   The lock string is defined as *LK* in the first four characters of the password field.

       lastchg	   The	number	of  days between January 1, 1970, and the date that the password was last modified. The lastchg value is a decimal
		   number, as interpreted by strtol(3C).

       min	   The minimum number of days required between password changes. This field must be set to 0 or above to enable password aging.

       max	   The maximum number of days the password is valid.

       warn	   The number of days before password expires that the user is warned.

       inactive    The number of days of inactivity allowed for that user. This is counted on a per-machine basis; the information about the  last
		   login is taken from the machine's lastlog file.

       expire	   An  absolute date expressed as the number of days since the Unix Epoch (January 1, 1970). When this number is reached the login
		   can no longer be used. For example, an expire value of 13514 specifies a login expiration of January 1, 2007.

       flag	   Failed login count in low order four bits; remainder reserved for future use, set to zero.

       A value of -1 for min, max, or warn disables password aging.

       The encrypted password consists of at most CRYPT_MAXCIPHERTEXTLEN characters chosen from a 64-character alphabet (., /, 0-9, A-Z, a-z). Two
       additional  special  characters,  "$" and ",", can also be used and are defined in crypt(3C). To update this file, use the passwd(1), user-
       add(1M), usermod(1M), or userdel(1M) commands.

       In order to make system administration manageable, /etc/shadow entries should appear in exactly the same order as /etc/passwd entries; this
       includes ``+'' and ``-'' entries if the compat source is being used (see nsswitch.conf(4)).

       Values for the various time-related fields are interpreted as Greenwich Mean Time.

FILES

       /etc/shadow	     shadow password file

       /etc/passwd	     password file

       /etc/nsswitch.conf    name-service switch configuration file

       /var/adm/lastlog      time of last login

ATTRIBUTES

       See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |      ATTRIBUTE TYPE	     |	    ATTRIBUTE VALUE	   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
       |Interface Stability	     |Stable			   |
       +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+

SEE ALSO

       login(1),  passwd(1),  useradd(1M),  userdel(1M),  usermod(1M),	strtol(3C), crypt(3C), crypt_gensalt(3C), getspnam(3C), putspent(3C), nss-
       witch.conf(4), passwd(4), attributes(5), pam_unix_account(5), pam_unix_auth(5)

NOTES

       If password aging is turned on in any name service the passwd: line in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file must have a format specified in the nss-
       witch.conf(4) man page.

       If  the	/etc/nsswitch.conf  passwd  policy  is	not  in one of the supported formats, logins will not be allowed upon password expiration,
       because the software does not know how to handle password updates under these conditions. See nsswitch.conf(4) for additional information.

SunOS 5.11							    15 Sep 2005 							 shadow(4)