NAME
vipw —
edit the password file
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
vipw 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).
vipw 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.
The options are as follows:
-
-
- -d
directory
- Change the root directory of the password file from
“/” to directory.
If a
vipw session is killed it may leave
“
/etc/ptmp”, which will cause future
vipw executions to fail with “
vipw: the
passwd file is busy”, until it is removed.
ENVIRONMENT
If the following environment variable exists it will be used by
vipw:
-
-
EDITOR
- The editor specified by the string
EDITOR
will be invoked instead of the default
editor vi(1).
FILES
- /etc/master.passwd
- The current password file.
- /etc/ptmp
- Temporary copy of the password file used while
editing.
SEE ALSO
chpass(1),
passwd(1),
pwhash(1),
passwd(5),
passwd.conf(5),
pwd_mkdb(8),
user(8)
HISTORY
The
vipw command appeared in
4.0BSD.