PWUPDD(8)

📦
version 1.4.0 · 3 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

✨ PWUPDD(8) ✨

okay bestie, gather round, because we're talking about pwupdd — aka pwupdd.service, aka pwupdd.socket 🫶 she's a manual page, she lives in section 8, and she's here to update your passwd and shadow entries. no cap.

💖 NAME 💖

pwupdd, pwupdd.service, pwupdd.socket — update passwd and shadow entries

like. that's the whole vibe. account stuff gets updated. iconic behavior honestly.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

pwupdd.service
pwupdd.socket
/usr/libexec/pwupdd [OPTIONS...]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so here's the tea. pwupdd is an inetd(8) style, socket-activated service — which means every single time a request comes in, a whole fresh new instance of the daemon gets spun up. new request, new baby daemon. slay. 🔥

she exposes a Varlink interface so that authorized users can go ahead and modify their own account data — passwords, login shells, GECOS field info, all of it. authentication is handled via PAM(8), so you know it's legit.

and then there's the root user, main character energy as always 👑 — root gets to use some special methods to update any /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow entry. not just their own. everybody's. periodt.

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • -d, --debug — turn on debug mode ✨
  • -v, --verbose — turn on verbose logging, so she tells you everything she's doing 💅
  • -?, --help — bestie just wants to give you the help list 🥺
  • --version — prints the program version, no thoughts, just numbers

the service exposes the following methods via Varlink, and every single one of them is doing the most:

  • Chauthtok — changes the password for a provided user. authentication goes through PAM using the configuration pwupd-passwd. this one may be called by the root user or by the user who owns the record 💖
  • Chfn — changes the finger (GECOS) information of a user. authentication goes through PAM using the configuration pwupd-chfn. same deal: root or the record's owner can call it 🫶
  • Chsh — changes the login shell of an account. authentication goes through PAM using the configuration pwupd-chsh. and yup, once again: root or the user owning the record 🌸
  • UpdatePasswdShadow — updates the passwd and shadow entry of a specified user. ⚠️ ONLY root is allowed to call this method. not your friend, not your mutual, not you. root only. periodt.

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

passwd(1), chfn(1), chsh(1), pam(8)

💀 heads up bestie: UpdatePasswdShadow is root-only, and the other three methods are gated to either root or the user who owns the record. PAM does the auth check, so don't skip her. she will know.

and that's the whole page, bestie 🎀 this came to you from account-utils 1.4.0, dated 07/17/2026 — go update something responsibly, ily! 💜🧚🌺

📦 where this page comes from