smbpasswd

Samba

23 Oct 1998


NAME

smbpasswd - The Samba encrypted password file


SYNOPSIS


smbpasswd is the Samba encrypted password file.


DESCRIPTION


This file is part of the Samba suite.


smbpasswd is the Samba encrypted password file. It contains the username, unix user id and the SMB hashed passwords of the user, as well as account flag information and the time the password was last changed. This file format has been evolving with Samba and has had several different formats in the past.


FILE FORMAT


The format of the smbpasswd file used by Samba 2.0 is very similar to the familiar unix passwd (5) file. It is an ASCII file containing one line for each user. Each field within each line is separated from the next by a colon. Any entry beginning with # is ignored. The smbpasswd file contains the following information for each user:



NOTES


In previous versions of Samba (notably the 1.9.18 series) this file did not contain the Account Flags or Last Change Time fields. The Samba 2.0 code will read and write these older password files but will not be able to modify the old entries to add the new fields. New entries added with smbpasswd (8) will contain the new fields in the added accounts however. Thus an older smbpasswd file used with Samba 2.0 may end up with some accounts containing the new fields and some not.


In order to convert from an old-style smbpasswd file to a new style, run the script convert_smbpasswd, installed in the Samba bin/ directory (the same place that the smbd and nmbd binaries are installed) as follows:




    cat old_smbpasswd_file | convert_smbpasswd > new_smbpasswd_file



The convert_smbpasswd script reads from stdin and writes to stdout so as not to overwrite any files by accident.


Once this script has been run, check the contents of the new smbpasswd file to ensure that it has not been damaged by the conversion script (which uses awk), and then replace the <old smbpasswd file> with the <new smbpasswd file>.


VERSION


This man page is correct for version 2.0 of the Samba suite.


SEE ALSO


smbpasswd (8), samba (7), and the Internet RFC1321 for details on the MD4 algorithm.


AUTHOR


The original Samba software and related utilities were created by Andrew Tridgell (samba-bugs@samba.anu.edu.au). Samba is now developed by the Samba Team as an Open Source project similar to the way the Linux kernel is developed.


The original Samba man pages were written by Karl Auer. The man page sources were converted to YODL format (another excellent piece of Open Source software) and updated for the Samba2.0 release by Jeremy Allison, samba-bugs@samba.anu.edu.au.


See samba (7) to find out how to get a full list of contributors and details on how to submit bug reports, comments etc.