Availability: Unix.
This module provides access to the Unix user account and password database. It is available on all Unix versions.
Password database entries are reported as 7-tuples containing the
following items from the password database (see <pwd.h>
), in order:
Index | Field | Meaning |
---|---|---|
0 | pw_name |
Login name |
1 | pw_passwd |
Optional encrypted password |
2 | pw_uid |
Numerical user ID |
3 | pw_gid |
Numerical group ID |
4 | pw_gecos |
User name or comment field |
5 | pw_dir |
User home directory |
6 | pw_shell |
User command interpreter |
The uid and gid items are integers, all others are strings. KeyError is raised if the entry asked for cannot be found.
Note:
In traditional Unix the field pw_passwd
usually
contains a password encrypted with a DES derived algorithm (see module
crypt ). However most modern unices
use a so-called shadow password system. On those unices the
field pw_passwd
only contains a asterisk ('*'
) or the
letter "x" where the encrypted password is stored in a file
/etc/shadow which is not world readable.
It defines the following items:
See Also: