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From: stevea@laiter.i88.isc.com (Steve Alexander)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Re: Using "getpwent" in SYSV/386
Message-ID: <1989Nov21.150350.2984@i88.isc.com>
Date: 21 Nov 89 15:03:50 GMT
References: <785@ctdi.UUCP> <11633@smoke.BRL.MIL> <2941@levels.sait.edu.au>
Sender: usenet@i88.isc.com (Usenet News)
Reply-To: stevea@i88.isc.com (Steve Alexander)
Organization: INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation, Naperville, IL
Lines: 19

In article <2941@levels.sait.edu.au> CCDN@levels.sait.edu.au (david newall) writes:
>The purpose of /etc/shadow is NOT to make it inconvenient to access this
>data, assuming you have permission to access it.  I would have thought it
>reasonable for getpwent to fill in the pw_passwd field if it was invoked
>by root.  Alternatively, I would have thought "getshadowent" routines would
>have been provided (for the exclusive use of root processes).

There are functions to access the shadow password file.  They are in
/usr/lib/libsec.a.  There is a header file <shadow.h> that must
be included in order to use these functions.  Obviously this will only
work if the effective uid is root.

These functions return a pointer to a struct spwd which is defined in shadow.h.
Otherwise they work a lot like the normal password routines.  There are
also some password file locking routines in libsec.a; presumably they
are used when writing an entry to a password file.
-- 
Steve Alexander, Software Technologies Group    | stevea@i88.isc.com
INTERACTIVE Systems Corporation, Naperville, IL | ...!{sun,ico}!laidbak!stevea