What does an * in master.passwd (not passwd) mean?

Paul Hoffman phoffman at proper.com
Fri Sep 16 15:21:40 PDT 2005


In 5.4 (and probably lots of other versions), the master.passwd file 
is pre-seeded with lots of accounts such as daemon, operator, and so 
on. The master.passwd file looks like:

daemon:*:1:1::0:0:Owner of many system processes:/root:/usr/sbin/nologin
operator:*:2:5::0:0:System &:/:/usr/sbin/nologin
. . .

The man page for master.passwd and passwd say what an "*" in the 
second field means in passwd, but not in master.passwd. Any clues 
would be appreciated (and I will put in a documentation pr when I 
have an answer).

--Paul Hoffman


More information about the freebsd-questions mailing list