The password database
pwd — The password database¶
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 |
|
Login name |
1 |
|
Optional encrypted password |
2 |
|
Numerical user ID |
3 |
|
Numerical group ID |
4 |
|
User name or comment field |
5 |
|
User home directory |
6 |
|
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
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:
-
pwd.getpwuid(uid)¶ Return the password database entry for the given numeric user ID.
-
pwd.getpwnam(name)¶ Return the password database entry for the given user name.
-
pwd.getpwall()¶ Return a list of all available password database entries, in arbitrary order.