problem with passwd-file

[hubbe]

I want to have some information in the "user information"-field about every user in the /etc/passwd

But when I write anything at all on user "nobody" and "lpd" they autoswitch the GID.

Why????

orginal:
nobody:!:4294967294:4294967294::/:

when I with smitty put in the word "test" in the user information field the line look like this in /etc/passwd:
nobody:!:-2:-2:test:/:

Any tip how I can get around this problem?

In the end I want to search the "user info"field and have the output in a textfile for easy overviewing.

Regards

 

[hubbe]

one more thing

in the "user information"-field, is it okej to use "/" and "*"???

 

[bi]

Well, you could directly edit the /etc/passwd file, but I recommend you make a backup copy first (use cp -p to preserve the ownership and permission), and when you are finished make a second connection to the system to make sure the file doesn't have any errors that would disallow any logins. You also could edit it with vipw, which will not allow you to save the changes if you have messed up the file.

I suspect the reason why the UID and GID change is because for nobody those default numbers exceed the maximum for UIDs and GIDs and since you edited the account info through smit, the UID and GID went to the traditional BSD numbers (-2). the nobody account is important for NFS.

I would be cautious of changing anything in the system default user ids (nobody, lp, lpd, bin, etc.)

You can't use some special characters in the user name, but I don't think there are any restrictions in the user information. check man mkuser to be sure.