pwd
This module provides access to the Unix user account and password database. It is available on all Unix versions.
Password database entries are reported as a tuple-like object, whose attributes correspond to the members of the passwd
structure (Attribute field below, see <pwd.h>
):
Index | Attribute | Meaning |
---|---|---|
0 | pw_name |
Login name |
1 | pw_passwd |
Optional encrypted password |
2 | pw_uid |
Numerical user ID |
3 | pw_gid |
Numerical group ID |
4 | pw_gecos |
User name or comment field |
5 | pw_dir |
User home directory |
6 | pw_shell |
User command interpreter |
The uid and gid items are integers, all others are strings. KeyError
is raised if the entry asked for cannot be found.
Note
module: crypt
In traditional Unix the field pw_passwd
usually contains a password encrypted with a DES derived algorithm (see module crypt
). However most modern unices use a so-called shadow password system. On those unices the pw_passwd field only contains an asterisk ('*'
) or the letter 'x'
where the encrypted password is stored in a file /etc/shadow
which is not world readable. Whether the pw_passwd field contains anything useful is system-dependent. If available, the spwd
module should be used where access to the encrypted password is required.
It defines the following items:
getpwuid(uid)
Return the password database entry for the given numeric user ID.
getpwnam(name)
Return the password database entry for the given user name.
getpwall()
Return a list of all available password database entries, in arbitrary order.
- Module
grp
An interface to the group database, similar to this.
- Module
spwd
An interface to the shadow password database, similar to this.