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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
|| /* Glibc versions <= 2.19: */ _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_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; see signal(7).
EIO I/O error.
EMFILE The per-process limit on the number of open file descriptors has been reached.
ENFILE The system-wide limit on the total number of open files has been reached.
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
For an explanation of the terms used in this section, see attributes(7).
┌──────────────┬───────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│Interface │ Attribute │ Value │
├──────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│getpwnam() │ Thread safety │ MT-Unsafe race:pwnam locale │
├──────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│getpwuid() │ Thread safety │ MT-Unsafe race:pwuid locale │
├──────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│getpwnam_r(), │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe locale │
│getpwuid_r() │ │ │
└──────────────┴───────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘
CONFORMING TO
POSIX.1-2001, POSIX.1-2008, SVr4, 4.3BSD. 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.
EXAMPLES
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 <stdint.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: %jd\n", pwd.pw_gecos,
(intmax_t) 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
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project, information about reporting bugs, and the latest version of this page, can be
found at https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.