From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Feb 20 18:53:33 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from alpha.comkey.com.au (alpha.comkey.com.au [203.9.152.215]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 4572110E61 for ; Sat, 20 Feb 1999 18:53:17 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from gjb@comkey.com.au) Received: (qmail 7092 invoked by uid 1001); 21 Feb 1999 00:57:45 -0000 Message-ID: <19990221005745.7091.qmail@alpha.comkey.com.au> X-Posted-By: GBA-Post 1.04 06-Feb-1999 X-PGP-Fingerprint: 5A91 6942 8CEA 9DAB B95B C249 1CE1 493B 2B5A CE30 Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 10:57:45 +1000 From: Greg Black To: Mark Ovens Cc: Langa Kentane , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG, ruan@ctech.ac.za Subject: Re: Can't change shell - Please help newbie References: <913B8C252194D2119BD500805F318178030416@za12nt02.mweb.com> <19990220124307.E185@localhost> In-reply-to: <19990220124307.E185@localhost> of Sat, 20 Feb 1999 12:43:07 GMT Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG First, please trim the irrelevant elements of posts that you respond to (see the regular article about how to get the best from the list if this is a puzzle). > How are you editing the password file? If you are just editing > /etc/passwd it won't work. Use vipw(8). When you save and exit vipw > re-builds the passwd database. It might be useful to explain why editing /etc/passwd is no use, since that has been for many years (and still is, in many cases) the canonical way to do these things. FreeBSD (like many other modern systems) provides both "shadow" passwords and a variety of extra fields that are not part of the traditional /etc/passwd file. All this magic is contained in the new passwd file (/etc/master.passwd) and this is the file that must be edited (using vipw) for changes to take effect. After the editing is done, vipw does what is needed to update both /etc/passwd and the hashed database files -- which are the files that are really accessed by all the lookup routines. RTFM for a fuller description, starting with passwd(5). -- Greg Black To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message