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NAME
getpwnam, getpwnam_r, getpwuid, getpwuid_r - get password file entry
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <pwd.h>
struct passwd *getpwnam(const char *name);
struct passwd *getpwuid(uid_t uid);
int getpwnam_r(const char *name, struct passwd *pwd,
char *buf, size_t buflen, struct passwd **result);
int getpwuid_r(uid_t uid, struct passwd *pwd,
char *buf, size_t buflen, struct passwd **result);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
getpwnam_r(), getpwuid_r():
_POSIX_C_SOURCE >= 1 || _XOPEN_SOURCE || _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE || _POSIX_SOURCE
DESCRIPTION
The getpwnam() function returns a pointer to a structure containing the broken-out fields of the record
in the password database (e.g., the local password file /etc/passwd, NIS, and LDAP) that matches the
username name.
The getpwuid() function returns a pointer to a structure containing the broken-out fields of the record
in the password database that matches the user ID uid.
The passwd structure is defined in <pwd.h> as follows:
struct passwd {
char *pw_name; /* username */
char *pw_passwd; /* user password */
uid_t pw_uid; /* user ID */
gid_t pw_gid; /* group ID */
char *pw_gecos; /* user information */
char *pw_dir; /* home directory */
char *pw_shell; /* shell program */
};
See passwd(5) for more information about these fields.
The getpwnam_r() and getpwuid_r() functions obtain the same information as getpwnam() and getpwuid(), but
store the retrieved passwd structure in the space pointed to by pwd. The string fields pointed to by the
members of the passwd structure are stored in the buffer buf of size buflen. A pointer to the result (in
case of success) or NULL (in case no entry was found or an error occurred) is stored in *result.
The call
sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX)
returns either -1, without changing errno, or an initial suggested size for buf. (If this size is too
small, the call fails with ERANGE, in which case the caller can retry with a larger buffer.)
RETURN VALUE
The getpwnam() and getpwuid() functions return a pointer to a passwd structure, or NULL if the matching
entry is not found or an error occurs. If an error occurs, errno is set appropriately. If one wants to
check errno after the call, it should be set to zero before the call.
The return value may point to a static area, and may be overwritten by subsequent calls to getpwent(3),
getpwnam(), or getpwuid(). (Do not pass the returned pointer to free(3).)
On success, getpwnam_r() and getpwuid_r() return zero, and set *result to pwd. If no matching password
record was found, these functions return 0 and store NULL in *result. In case of error, an error number
is returned, and NULL is stored in *result.
ERRORS
0 or ENOENT or ESRCH or EBADF or EPERM or ...
The given name or uid was not found.
EINTR A signal was caught.
EIO I/O error.
EMFILE The maximum number (OPEN_MAX) of files was open already in the calling process.
ENFILE The maximum number of files was open already in the system.
ENOMEM Insufficient memory to allocate passwd structure.
ERANGE Insufficient buffer space supplied.
NOTE
The user password database mostly refers to /etc/passwd. However, with recent systems it also refers to
network wide databases using NIS, LDAP and other local files as configured in /etc/nsswitch.conf.
FILES
/etc/passwd
local password database file
/etc/nsswitch.conf
System Databases and Name Service Switch configuration file
ATTRIBUTES
Multithreading (see pthreads(7)) The getpwnam() and getpwuid() functions are not thread-safe. The getpwnam_r() and getpwuid_r() functions are thread-safe.
CONFORMING TO
SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001. The pw_gecos field is not specified in POSIX, but is present on most
implementations.
NOTES
The formulation given above under "RETURN VALUE" is from POSIX.1-2001. It does not call "not found" an
error, and hence does not specify what value errno might have in this situation. But that makes it
impossible to recognize errors. One might argue that according to POSIX errno should be left unchanged
if an entry is not found. Experiments on various UNIX-like systems show that lots of different values
occur in this situation: 0, ENOENT, EBADF, ESRCH, EWOULDBLOCK, EPERM and probably others.
The pw_dir field contains the name of the initial working directory of the user. Login programs use the
value of this field to initialize the HOME environment variable for the login shell. An application that
wants to determine its user's home directory should inspect the value of HOME (rather than the value
getpwuid(getuid())->pw_dir) since this allows the user to modify their notion of "the home directory"
during a login session. To determine the (initial) home directory of another user, it is necessary to
use getpwnam("username")->pw_dir or similar.
EXAMPLE
The program below demonstrates the use of getpwnam_r() to find the full username and user ID for the
username supplied as a command-line argument.
#include <pwd.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <errno.h>
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
struct passwd pwd;
struct passwd *result;
char *buf;
size_t bufsize;
int s;
if (argc != 2) {
fprintf(stderr, "Usage: %s username\n", argv[0]);
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
bufsize = sysconf(_SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX);
if (bufsize == -1) /* Value was indeterminate */
bufsize = 16384; /* Should be more than enough */
buf = malloc(bufsize);
if (buf == NULL) {
perror("malloc");
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
s = getpwnam_r(argv[1], &pwd, buf, bufsize, &result);
if (result == NULL) {
if (s == 0)
printf("Not found\n");
else {
errno = s;
perror("getpwnam_r");
}
exit(EXIT_FAILURE);
}
printf("Name: %s; UID: %ld\n", pwd.pw_gecos, (long) pwd.pw_uid);
exit(EXIT_SUCCESS);
}
SEE ALSO
endpwent(3), fgetpwent(3), getgrnam(3), getpw(3), getpwent(3), getspnam(3), putpwent(3), setpwent(3),
nsswitch.conf(5), passwd(5)
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.54 of the Linux man-pages project. A description of the project, and
information about reporting bugs, can be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.