the webmaster adds that many of the things done with
this command require that you be logged on as root
which is the UNIX super user id or any other
super user id on your unix system
Maintenance Commands usermod(1M)
NAME
usermod - modify a user's login information on the system
SYNOPSIS
usermod [ -u uid [ -o ] ] [ -g group ] [ -G group [ ,
group ... ] ] [ -d dir [ -m ] ] [ -s shell ] [
-c comment ] [ -l new_logname ] [ -f inactive ] [
-e expire ] login
DESCRIPTION
The usermod utility modifies a user's login definition on
the system. It changes the definition of the specified login
and makes the appropriate login-related system file and file
system changes.
The system file entries created with this command have a
limit of 512 characters per line. Specifying long arguments
to several options may exceed this limit.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-u uid Specify a new UID for the user. It must be a non-
negative decimal integer less than MAXUID as
defined in <param.h>. Note that the UID associ-
ated with the user's home directory is not modi-
fied with this option; a user will not have access
to their home directory until the UID is manually
reassigned using chown(1M).
-o This option allows the specified UID to be dupli-
cated (non-unique).
-g group Specify an existing group's integer ID or
character-string name. It redefines the user's
primary group membership.
-G group Specify an existing group's integer "ID" "," or
character string name. It redefines the user's
supplementary group membership. Duplicates between
group with the -g and -G options are ignored. No
more than NGROUPS_UMAX groups may be specified as
defined in <param.h>.
-d dir Specify the new home directory of the user. It
defaults to base_dir/login, where base_dir is the
base directory for new login home directories, and
login is the new login.
-m Move the user's home directory to the new direc-
tory specified with the -d option. If the direc-
tory already exists, it must have permissions
read/write/execute by group, where group is the
user's primary group.
-s shell Specify the full pathname of the program that is
used as the user's shell on login. The value of
shell must be a valid executable file.
-c comment
Specify a comment string. comment can be any text
string. It is generally a short description of the
login, and is currently used as the field for the
user's full name. This information is stored in
the user's /etc/passwd entry.
-l new_logname
Specify the new login name for the user. The
new_logname argument is a string no more than
eight bytes consisting of characters from the set
of alphabetic characters, numeric characters,
period (.), underline (_), and hypen (-). The
first character should be alphabetic and the field
should contain at least one lower case alphabetic
character. A warning message will be written if
these restrictions are not met. A future Solaris
release may refuse to accept login fields that do
not meet these requirements. The new_logname
argument must contain at least one character and
must not contain a colon (:) or NEWLINE (\n).
-e expire Specify the future date on which a login can no
longer be used; after this date, no user will be
able to access this login. This option is useful
for creating temporary logins. You may type the
value of the argument expire (which is a date) in
any format you like (except a Julian date). For
example, you may enter 10/6/90 or October 6,
1990. A value of `` '' defeats the status of the
expired date.
-f inactive
Specify the maximum number of days allowed between
uses of a login ID before that login ID is
declared invalid. Normal values are positive
integers. A value of 0 defeats the status.
OPERANDS
The following operands are supported:
login An existing login name to be modified.
EXIT STATUS
In case of an error, usermod prints an error message and
exits with one of the following values:
2 The command syntax was invalid. A usage message
for the usermod command is displayed.
3 An invalid argument was provided to an option.
4 The uid given with the -u option is already in
use.
5 The password files contain an error. pwconv(1M)
can be used to correct possible errors. See
passwd(4).
6 The login to be modified does not exist, the group
does not exist, or the login shell does not exist.
8 The login to be modified is in use.
9 The new_logname is already in use.
10 Cannot update the /etc/group file. Other update
requests will be implemented.
11 Insufficient space to move the home directory (-m
option). Other update requests will be imple-
mented.
12 Unable to complete the move of the home directory
to the new home directory.
FILES
/etc/passwd
system password file
/etc/shadow
system file containing users' encrypted passwords
and related information
/etc/group
system file containing group definitions
/etc/datemsk
system file of date formats
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:
____________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
| Availability | SUNWcsu |
|_____________________________|_____________________________|
SEE ALSO
passwd(1), users(1B), chown(1M), groupadd(1M), groupdel(1M),
groupmod(1M), logins(1M), pwconv(1M), useradd(1M),
userdel(1M), passwd(4), attributes(5)
NOTES
The usermod utility modifies passwd definitions only in
the local /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files. If a network
nameservice such as NIS or NIS+ is being used to supplement
the local files with additional entries, usermod cannot
change information supplied by the network nameservice. How-
ever usermod will verify the uniqueness of user name and
user ID against the external nameservice.
The usermod utility uses the /etc/datemsk file, available
with SUNWaccr, for date formatting.
