+ at the begining of a line in password file

jimieee · 04-02-2005, 05:19 PM

Hi,

I've been trying to find out the answer to this, by googling but am not having much luck. Can anyone put me out of my misery?

What does a plus at the begining of a line in the password file signify?

Thanks,

James

RHELL · 04-02-2005, 10:41 PM

Does it demonstrate correlation to NIS?

Look here:
http://fusion.gat.com/docview/passwd_file.html

jimieee · 04-03-2005, 04:20 AM

OK,

So if it's got a + at the begining of the line the NIS data gets inserted there? Unless it's +name or +@name, which are used to insert specific information about those user or group names respectively?

~James~

btmiller · 04-03-2005, 02:40 PM

Pretty much ... +@name specifies a line relating to the netgroup name (a netgroup is different from a system group). So, for example on a server I could have:

+@admins::::::
+::::::/sbin/nologin

which would only allow people in the admins netgroup to login to the server (everyone else would have /sbin/nologin as their shell). NIS is still used in some networks (particularly trusted ones, since it has some known security issues), but many admins are switching to LDAP.