Installing Shadowpwd

Installation of Shadow Password Suite

Install the Shadow Password Suite by running the following commands:


patch -Np1 -i ../shadow-20001016.patch &&
./configure --prefix=/usr &&
make &&
make install &&
cd etc &&
cp limits login.access /etc &&
sed "s|/var/spool/mail|/var/mail|" login.defs.linux > /etc/login.defs

Command explanations

cp limits login.access and others: These files were not installed during the installation of the package so we copy them manually as those files are used to configure authentication details on the system.

sed "s|/var/spool/mail|/var/mail|" login.defs.linux > /etc/login.defs: /var/spool/mail is the old location of the user mailboxes. The location that is used nowadays is /var/mail.

Contents

The Shadow Password Suite contains the chage, chfn, chsh, expiry, faillog, gpasswd, lastlog, login, newgrp, passwd, sg, su, chpasswd, dpasswd, groupadd, groupdel, groupmod, grpck, grpconv, grpunconv, logoutd, mkpasswd, newusers, pwck, pwconv, pwunconv, useradd, userdel, usermod and vipw programs.

Description

chage

chage changes the number of days between password changes and the date of the last password change.

chfn

chfn changes user full name, office number, office extension, and home phone number information for a user's account.

chsh

chsh changes the user login shell.

expiry

Checks and enforces password expiration policy.

faillog

faillog formats the contents of the failure log,/var/log/faillog, and maintains failure counts and limits.

gpasswd

gpasswd is used to administer the /etc/group file

lastlog

lastlog formats and prints the contents of the last login log, /var/log/lastlog. The login-name, port, and last login time will be printed.

login

login is used to establish a new session with the system.

newgrp

newgrp is used to change the current group ID during a login session.

passwd

passwd changes passwords for user and group accounts.

sg

sg executes command as a different group ID.

su

Change the effective user id and group id to that of a user. This replaces the su programs that's installed from the Shellutils package.

chpasswd

chpasswd reads a file of user name and password pairs from standard input and uses this information to update a group of existing users.

dpasswd

dpasswd adds, deletes, and updates dial-up passwords for user login shells.

groupadd

The groupadd command creates a new group account using the values specified on the command line and the default values from the system.

groupdel

The groupdel command modifies the system account files, deleting all entries that refer to group.

groupmod

The groupmod command modifies the system account files to reflect the changes that are specified on the command line.

grpck

grpck verifies the integrity of the system authentication information.

grpconv

grpunconv converts to shadow group files from normal group files.

grpunconv

grpunconv converts from shadow group files to normal group files.

logoutd

logoutd enforces the login time and port restrictions specified in /etc/porttime.

mkpasswd

mkpasswd reads a file in the format given by the flags and converts it to the corresponding database file format.

newusers

newusers reads a file of user name and clear text password pairs and uses this information to update a group of existing users or to create new users.

pwck

pwck verifies the integrity of the system authentication information.

pwconv

pwconv converts to shadow passwd files from normal passwd files.

pwunconv

pwunconv converts from shadow passwd files to normal files.

useradd

useradd creates a new user or update default new user information.

userdel

userdel modifies the system account files, deleting all entries that refer to a specified login name.

usermod

usermod modifies the system account files to reflect the changes that are specified on the command line.

vipw and vigr

vipw and vigr will edit the files /etc/passwd and /etc/group, respectively. With the -s flag, they will edit the shadow versions of those files, /etc/shadow and /etc/gshadow, respectively.