NAME
vipw —
edit the password file
SYNOPSIS
vipw |
[-d directory] |
DESCRIPTION
The vipw utility edits the password file
after setting the appropriate locks, and does any necessary processing after
the password file is unlocked. If the password file is already locked for
editing by another user, vipw will ask you to try
again later. The default editor for vipw is
vi(1).
When run without options, vipw will work
with the password files in /etc. The
-d option may be used to specify an alternative
directory to work with.
The vipw utility performs a number of
consistency checks on the password entries, and will not allow a password
file with a “mangled” entry to be installed. If
vipw rejects the new password file, the user is
prompted to re-enter the edit session.
Once the information has been verified,
vipw uses
pwd_mkdb(8) to update the user database. This is run in the
background, and, at very large sites could take several minutes. Until this
update is completed, the password file is unavailable for other updates and
the new information is not available to programs.
ENVIRONMENT
If the following environment variable exists it will be utilized
by vipw:
EDITOR- The editor specified by the string
EDITORwill be invoked instead of the default editor vi(1). This can be used to allow a script to non-interactively modify the password file. PW_SCAN_BIG_IDS- See pwd_mkdb(8).
SEE ALSO
HISTORY
The vipw utility appeared in
4.0BSD.
BUGS
The mechanism for checking for password file modifications
requires that the modification time of the password file changes. This means
that in a default configuration where file system timestamps are not
calculated with sub-second precision, EDITOR has to
run for at least one second. Non-interactive editor scripts should invoke
sleep(1) or
equivalent to ensure this happens.