Name

getauth, setauth, rmauth − auth database maintenance

Syntax

getauth [username]

setauth

rmauth username

Description

The command getauth takes as it’s only argument a user name or UID. If a user name is supplied it is converted to a UID by searching through /etc/passwd. The UID is then used to look up the users entry in the /etc/auth database. If an entry is found it is converted to an ASCII string with a syntax resembling that of the passwd file and printed out as a single line. If no entry is found nothing is printed and an exit status of ‘1’ is returned.

# getauth username
1000:idvidfy8d:1920129:3600:2678400:0e:0:1000:0:00:00

The first field is the UID of the entry which is used as the key into the database.  Then follows: the encrypted password, password modification time, minimum password lifetime, maximum password lifetime, account mask, login failure count, audit ID, audit control, audit mask, and a reserved field.

If the optional username argument is not supplied to getauth it will produce an output line for every entry in the auth database. 

The setauth command expects one or more lines from the standard input which must be of a form identical to that produced by the getauth command.  The setauth command converts and stores these lines into the auth database, one entry per line, replacing any entry already existing for the given UID.  By piping the output of the getauth command into the input of the setauth command an expensive NOP can be produced:

# /usr/etc/sec/getauth | /usr/etc/sec/setauth

The rmauth command expects exactly one argument, the user name or UID of an auth entry to be deleted. If the entry is found it is erased and deleted. If it is not found no action is taken and an exit status of 1 is returned.

Restrictions

Only the superuser and members of the group authread may read information from the auth database.  Only the superuser may modify the auth database.

Diagnostics

An exit value of 0 indicates a successful operation. An exit status of 1 indicates the entry was not found on a lookup or deletion operation.  Any other exit status indicates an error. 

Files

/etc/auth.[pag,dir]
/etc/passwd

See Also

getauthuid(3), getpwent(3), auth(5), edauth(8)
Security Guide for Administrators