Redhat: Shadow

The Redhat Shadow Password Suite

Before security became an issue all users and passwords were stored in /etc/passwd and /etc/group files. But having the passwords stored in a reachable file is obviously not an option any more. The shadow password suite is designed to solve this problem. Sensitive data such as passwords have been moved to a file only accessible to the root user.

The Shadow password suite consists of four files. /etc/passwd and /etc/group are the files used origanally. Two files have been added to the suite: /etc/shadow and /etc/gshadow. The default values of the files are defined in /etc/login.defs

passwd

The passwd file contain teh basic information about every user on the system. Each user has seven columns of information.

AAAS_TEST:x:30587:30588::/home/AAAS_TEST:/bin/bash
tom_gds:x:30588:30589::/home/tom_gds:/bin/bash
manu_iitk:x:30589:30589::/home/manu_iitk:/bin/bash
jump_trading:x:30590:30590::/home/jump_trading:/bin/bash
saha_pec:x:30591:30591::/home/saha_pec:/bin/bash

Username	michael	The username used to log into the system
Password	x	The password of the user. An 'x' means the password in in the shadow file, an '*' means the account is disabled or the encrypted password.
User ID	500	numeric user ID - users IDs start at 500 by default
Group ID	500	numeric gorup ID - group IDs start at 500 by default. Redhat will create a group for every user which will normally have the same id as the user.
User Info	Michael H	any extra information
Home Directory	/home/michael	The users home direcotory, by default in /home/<username>
Login Shell	/bin/bash	The shell used by the user, by default this is bash

A service account is have the /bin/nologin sheell. This prevents anyone logging into the system as a service. If you see a service logged in it likely means that someone has broken into the system

group

Every user is assinged by default to a group with the same name, their private group. This group will only have that user as a member.

Each group is defined in the group file using four columns of information

AAAS_TEST:x:30588:
manu_iitk:x:30589:
jump_trading:x:30590:
saha_pec:x:30591:

Group Name	admins	The name of the group
Password	x	The group password. An 'x' shows the password is in the gshadow file, otherwise its the encrypted password.
GroupID	500	The group ID, satrts at 500 and will normally match the User ID of the same name.
Group Members	michael,dave	The members of the group, if there are none the the user with the same name is the only member

shadow

The shadow file is an extension of the passwd file. It contains 8 columns of information. There is will be line for every user in the passwd file, where the passwd column contains 'x'.

Username	The username of the account
Password	Encrypted Password
Password History	Date of last password change in days since jan 1st 1970
mindays	Minumum number of days a user must keep a password
maxdays	Maximum number of days after which the password must be changed
warndays	Number of days before password expiration to warn the user
inactive	Number of days after password expiration to make account inactive
disabled	Number of days after password expiration to disable account