user Id vs Password Post: 7410

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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers user Id vs Password Post 7410 by LivinFree on Wednesday 26th of September 2001 03:55:46 AM

09-26-2001

Registered User

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!

LivinFree

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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN

file::homedir::unix

File::HomeDir::Unix(3pm)				User Contributed Perl Documentation				  File::HomeDir::Unix(3pm)

NAME

       File::HomeDir::Unix - Find your home and other directories on legacy Unix

SYNOPSIS

	 use File::HomeDir;

	 # Find directories for the current user
	 $home	  = File::HomeDir->my_home;	   # /home/mylogin
	 $desktop = File::HomeDir->my_desktop;	   # All of these will...
	 $docs	  = File::HomeDir->my_documents;   # ...default to home...
	 $music   = File::HomeDir->my_music;	   # ...directory
	 $pics	  = File::HomeDir->my_pictures;    #
	 $videos  = File::HomeDir->my_videos;	   #
	 $data	  = File::HomeDir->my_data;	   #

DESCRIPTION

       This module provides implementations for determining common user directories.  In normal usage this module will always be used via
       File::HomeDir.

SUPPORT

       See the support section the main File::HomeDir module.

AUTHORS

       Adam Kennedy <adamk@cpan.org>

       Sean M. Burke <sburke@cpan.org>

SEE ALSO

       File::HomeDir, File::HomeDir::Win32 (legacy)

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright 2005 - 2011 Adam Kennedy.

       Some parts copyright 2000 Sean M. Burke.

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

       The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.

perl v5.14.2							    2012-01-25						  File::HomeDir::Unix(3pm)