Provided by: manpages-dev_6.15-1_all 
NAME
getpwnam, getpwnam_r, getpwuid, getpwuid_r - get password file entry
LIBRARY
Standard C library (libc, -lc)
SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <pwd.h>
struct passwd *getpwnam(const char *name);
struct passwd *getpwuid(uid_t uid);
int getpwnam_r(size_t size;
const char *restrict name, struct passwd *restrict pwd,
char buf[restrict size], size_t size,
struct passwd **restrict result);
int getpwuid_r(size_t size;
uid_t uid, struct passwd *restrict pwd,
char buf[restrict size], size_t size,
struct passwd **restrict result);
Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):
getpwnam_r(), getpwuid_r():
_POSIX_C_SOURCE
|| /* glibc <= 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 size. 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 to indicate the error. 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(), getpwuid_r() │ Thread safety │ MT-Safe locale │
└────────────────────────────┴───────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
VERSIONS
The pw_gecos field is not specified in POSIX, but is present on most implementations.
STANDARDS
POSIX.1-2008.
HISTORY
POSIX.1-2001, SVr4, 4.3BSD.
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 <errno.h>
#include <pwd.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
int
main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
struct passwd pwd;
struct passwd *result;
char *buf;
long 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)
Linux man-pages 6.15 2025-06-28 getpwnam(3)