CHPASS(1)

💖 NAME 💖

okay bestie, welcome to CHPASS(1) from the General Commands Manual — this is the page for chpass, chfn, chsh, ypchpass, ypchfn, and ypchsh, aka the utilities that add or change user database information. ✨

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

chpass [-a list] [-e expiretime] [-p encpass] [-s newshell] [user]
ypchpass [-loy] [-a list] [-d domain] [-e expiretime] [-h host]
       [-p encpass] [-s newshell] [user]

quick heads-up: the ypchpass synopsis includes -loy, -d domain, and -h host; this page doesn't spell out separate descriptions for those three, so I'm keeping them visible up there and not inventing details 💅

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

The chpass utility lets you edit the user database information for user, or by default for the current user. 💖

chfn, chsh, ypchpass, ypchfn, and ypchsh behave identically to chpass — and ngl, there is only one program under all those names 😭.

The info gets formatted and handed to an editor for changes.

Only the information that the user is allowed to change is displayed. 👑

The options are as follows:

• -a list — the super-user can directly supply a user database entry, in the format specified by passwd(5), as an argument. This argument must be a colon (:) separated list of all the user database fields, although they may be empty.
• -e expiretime — change the account expire time. This option is used to set the expire time from a script as if it was done in the interactive editor.
• -p encpass — the super-user can directly supply an encrypted password field, in the format used by crypt(3), as an argument.
• -s newshell — attempt to change the user's shell to newshell.

Possible display items are as follows:

• Login: — user's login name
• Password: — user's encrypted password
• Uid: — user's login
• Gid: — user's login group
• Class: — user's general classification
• Change: — password change time
• Expire: — account expiration time
• Full Name: — user's real name
• Office Location: — user's office location (1)
• Office Phone: — user's office phone (1)
• Home Phone: — user's home phone (1)
• Other Information: — any locally defined parameters for user (1)
• Home Directory: — user's home directory
• Shell: — user's login shell

NOTE(1) — In the actual master.passwd file, these fields are comma-delimited fields embedded in the FullName field.

🍓 the fields themselves 🍓

The login field is the user name used to access the computer account.

The password field contains the encrypted form of the user's password.

The uid field is the number associated with the login field. Both of these fields should be unique across the system (and often across a group of systems) as they control file access.

While it is possible to have multiple entries with identical login names and/or identical user id's, it is usually a mistake to do so. Routines that manipulate these files will often return only one of the multiple entries, and that one by random selection.

The gid field is the group that the user will be placed in at login. Since BSD supports multiple groups (see groups(1)) this field currently has little special meaning. This field may be filled in with either a number or a group name (see group(5)).

The class field references class descriptions in /etc/login.conf and is typically used to initialize the user's system resource limits when they login.

The change field is the date by which the password must be changed.

The expire field is the date on which the account expires.

Both the change and expire fields should be entered in the form “month day year” where month is the month name (the first three characters are sufficient), day is the day of the month, and year is the year.

Five fields are available for storing the user's full name, office location, work and home telephone numbers and finally other information which is a single comma delimited string to represent any additional gecos fields (typically used for site specific user information). Note that finger(1) will display the office location and office phone together under the heading Office:.

The user's home directory is the full Unix path name where the user will be placed at login.

The shell field is the command interpreter the user prefers. If the shell field is empty, the POSIX shell, /bin/sh, is assumed. When altering a login shell, and not the super-user, the user may not change from a non-standard shell or to a non-standard shell. Non-standard is defined as a shell not found in /etc/shells.

Once the information has been verified, chpass uses pwd_mkdb(8) to update the user database.

🦋 ENVIRONMENT 🦋

The vi(1) editor will be used unless the environment variable EDITOR is set to an alternate editor. When the editor terminates, the information is re-read and used to update the user database itself. Only the user, or the super-user, may edit the information associated with the user.

See pwd_mkdb(8) for an explanation of the impact of setting the PW_SCAN_BIG_IDS environment variable.

💅 NIS INTERACTION 💅

okay so here's the tea — chpass can vibe with NIS too, but there are rules. Like, a lot of rules. 🫶

Right now, chpass can only make changes to the NIS passwd maps through rpc.yppasswdd(8), and that guy normally only lets you touch a user's password, shell and GECOS fields. So unless you're the super-user on the NIS master server, chpass (and, same energy, passwd(1)) can't use the rpc.yppasswdd(8) server to change other user info or add new records to the NIS passwd maps. Not happening, bestie. 🙈

Also rpc.yppasswdd(8) needs password authentication before it'll make any changes. The literal only user allowed to submit changes without handing over a password is the super-user on the NIS master server — everybody else, including people with root privileges on NIS clients (and NIS slave servers), has to enter a password. The super-user on the NIS master gets to bypass these restrictions, mostly for convenience: a user with root access to the NIS master server already has the privileges required to make updates to the NIS maps, but editing the map source files by hand can be cumbersome. 😭

Note: these exceptions only apply when the NIS master server is a FreeBSD system.

Consequently, except where noted, the following restrictions apply when chpass is used with NIS:

1. Only the shell and GECOS information may be changed. All other fields are restricted, even when chpass is invoked by the super-user. Like, while support for changing other fields could be added, that would lead to compatibility problems with other NIS-capable systems. So even though the super-user may supply data for other fields while editing an entry, the extra information (other than the password — see below) will be silently discarded. 💀

Exception: the super-user on the NIS master server is permitted to change any field.

2. Password authentication is required. chpass will prompt for the user's NIS password before effecting any changes. If the password is invalid, all changes will be discarded. poof, gone, bye. 🦋

Exception: the super-user on the NIS master server is allowed to submit changes without supplying a password. (The super-user may choose to turn off this feature using the -o flag, described below.)

3. Adding new records to the local password database is discouraged. chpass will allow the administrator to add new records to the local password database while NIS is enabled, but this can lead to some confusion since the new records are appended to the end of the master password file, usually after the special NIS '+' entries. The administrator should use vipw(8) to modify the local password file when NIS is running. 🙏

The super-user on the NIS master server is permitted to add new records to the NIS password maps, provided the rpc.yppasswdd(8) server has been started with the -a flag to permitted additions (it refuses them by default). chpass tries to update the local password database by default; to update the NIS maps instead, invoke chpass with the -y flag.

4. Password changes are not permitted. Users should use passwd(1) or yppasswd(1) to change their NIS passwords. The super-user is allowed to specify a new password (even though the “Password:” field does not show up in the editor template, the super-user may add it back by hand), but even the super-user must supply the user's original password — otherwise rpc.yppasswdd(8) will refuse to update the NIS maps. no notes. 🔥

Exception: the super-user on the NIS master server is permitted to change a user's NIS password with chpass.

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There are also a few extra option flags that are available when chpass is compiled with NIS support:

• -d domain — Specify a particular NIS domain. chpass uses the system domain name by default, as set by the domainname(1) utility. The -d option can be used to override a default, or to specify a domain when the system domain name is not set.
• -h host — Specify the name or address of an NIS server to query. Normally, chpass will communicate with the NIS master host specified in the master.passwd or passwd maps. On hosts that have not been configured as NIS clients, there is no way for the program to determine this information unless the user provides the hostname of a server. Note that the specified hostname need not be that of the NIS master server; the name of any server, master or slave, in a given NIS domain will do. 🌈

When using the -d option, the hostname defaults to “localhost”. The -h option can be used in conjunction with the -d option, in which case the user-specified hostname will override the default.

• -l — Force chpass to modify the local copy of a user's password information in the event that a user exists in both the local and NIS databases.
• -o — Force the use of RPC-based updates when communicating with rpc.yppasswdd(8) (“old-mode”). When invoked by the super-user on the NIS master server, chpass allows unrestricted changes to the NIS passwd maps using dedicated, non-RPC-based mechanism (in this case, a Unix domain socket). The -o flag can be used to force chpass to use the standard update mechanism instead. This option is provided mainly for testing purposes. 🧚
• -y — Opposite effect of -l. This flag is largely redundant since chpass operates on NIS entries by default if NIS is enabled.

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• /etc/master.passwd — the user database
• /etc/passwd — a Version 7 format password file
• /etc/pw.XXXXXX — temporary file
• /etc/shells — the list of approved shells

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⭐ EXAMPLES ⭐

Change the shell of the current user to ‘/usr/local/bin/zsh’:

chsh -s /usr/local/bin/zsh

(and yes bestie, that's literally the example, chsh and all — iconic. 👑)

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🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

finger(1), login(1), passwd(1), getusershell(3), login.conf(5), passwd(5), pw(8), pwd_mkdb(8), vipw(8)

Robert Morris and Ken Thompson, UNIX Password security.

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💜 HISTORY 💜

The chpass utility appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno. ancient. legendary. periodt. ✨

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💀 BUGS 💀

User information should (and eventually will) be stored elsewhere. like, the audacity. 😭

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and that's the whole page, bestie — this Debian build is dated May 25, 2021, and the manpage source signs off as CHPASS(1). go forth and edit those passwd entries responsibly. 💅💖