CHPASSWD(8) System Management Commands CHPASSWD(8)
NAME
chpasswd – update passwords in batch mode
SYNOPSIS
chpasswd [options]
DESCRIPTION
The chpasswd command reads a list of user name and password pairs
from standard input and uses this information to update a group of
existing users. Each line is of the format:
user_name:password
By default the passwords must be supplied in clear-text, and are
encrypted by chpasswd. Also the password age will be updated, if
present.
The default encryption algorithm can be defined for the system with
the ENCRYPT_METHOD or MD5_CRYPT_ENAB variables of /etc/login.defs,
and can be overwitten with the -e, -m, or -c options.
chpasswd first updates all the passwords in memory, and then commits
all the changes to disk if no errors occured for any user.
This command is intended to be used in a large system environment
where many accounts are created at a single time.
OPTIONS
The options which apply to the chpasswd command are:
-c, –crypt-method METHOD
Use the specified method to encrypt the passwords.
The available methods are DES, MD5, NONE, and SHA256 or SHA512 if
your libc support these methods.
By default (if none of the -c, -m, or -e options are specified),
the encryption method is defined by the ENCRYPT_METHOD or
MD5_CRYPT_ENAB variables of /etc/login.defs.
-e, –encrypted
Supplied passwords are in encrypted form.
-h, –help
Display help message and exit.
-m, –md5
Use MD5 encryption instead of DES when the supplied passwords are
not encrypted.
-R, –root CHROOT_DIR
Apply changes in the CHROOT_DIR directory and use the
configuration files from the CHROOT_DIR directory.
-s, –sha-rounds ROUNDS
Use the specified number of rounds to encrypt the passwords.
The value 0 means that the system will choose the default number
of rounds for the crypt method (5000).
A minimal value of 1000 and a maximal value of 999,999,999 will
be enforced.
You can only use this option with the SHA256 or SHA512 crypt
method.
By default, the number of rounds is defined by the
SHA_CRYPT_MIN_ROUNDS and SHA_CRYPT_MAX_ROUNDS variables in
/etc/login.defs.
CAVEATS
Remember to set permissions or umask to prevent readability of
unencrypted files by other users.
CONFIGURATION
The following configuration variables in /etc/login.defs change the
behavior of this tool:
ENCRYPT_METHOD (string)
This defines the system default encryption algorithm for
encrypting passwords (if no algorithm are specified on the
command line).
It can take one of these values: DES (default), MD5, SHA256,
SHA512.
Note: this parameter overrides the MD5_CRYPT_ENAB variable.
MD5_CRYPT_ENAB (boolean)
Indicate if passwords must be encrypted using the MD5-based
algorithm. If set to yes, new passwords will be encrypted using
the MD5-based algorithm compatible with the one used by recent
releases of FreeBSD. It supports passwords of unlimited length
and longer salt strings. Set to no if you need to copy encrypted
passwords to other systems which don’t understand the new
algorithm. Default is no.
This variable is superseded by the ENCRYPT_METHOD variable or by
any command line option used to configure the encryption
algorithm.
This variable is deprecated. You should use ENCRYPT_METHOD.
SHA_CRYPT_MIN_ROUNDS (number), SHA_CRYPT_MAX_ROUNDS (number)
When ENCRYPT_METHOD is set to SHA256 or SHA512, this defines the
number of SHA rounds used by the encryption algorithm by default
(when the number of rounds is not specified on the command line).
With a lot of rounds, it is more difficult to brute forcing the
password. But note also that more CPU resources will be needed to
authenticate users.
If not specified, the libc will choose the default number of
rounds (5000).
The values must be inside the 1000-999,999,999 range.
If only one of the SHA_CRYPT_MIN_ROUNDS or SHA_CRYPT_MAX_ROUNDS
values is set, then this value will be used.
If SHA_CRYPT_MIN_ROUNDS > SHA_CRYPT_MAX_ROUNDS, the highest value
will be used.
FILES
/etc/passwd
User account information.
/etc/shadow
Secure user account information.
/etc/login.defs
Shadow password suite configuration.
SEE ALSO
passwd(1), newusers(8), login.defs(5),useradd(8).
COLOPHON
This page is part of the shadow-utils (utilities for managing
accounts and shadow password files) project. Information about the
project can be found at ⟨http://pkg-shadow.alioth.debian.org/⟩. If
you have a bug report for this manual page, see
⟨http://pkg-shadow.alioth.debian.org/getinvolved.php⟩. This page was
obtained from the project’s upstream Subversion repository
(svn://anonscm.debian.org/pkg-shadow/) on 2014-12-30. If you dis‐
cover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or
you have corrections or improvements to the information in this
COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail
to [email protected]
shadow-utils 4.1.5.1 01/27/2014 CHPASSWD(8)