userhelper - A helper interface to pam.
SYNOPSIS
userhelper [ -t ] [ -d in,out,err ] [ -w prog args ]
[ -c ] [ -f full-name ] [ -o office ] [ -p office-phone ]
[ -h home-phone ] [ -s shell ] [ username ]
DESCRIPTION
NOTE this program is NOT intended to be run interactively.
If you want to change this information on the command line
use passwd(1), chfn(1), or chsh(1).
This program provides a basic interface to change a user's
password, gecos information, and shell. The main differ
nce between this program and its traditional equivilents
is that prompts come out on standard out to make it easy
for a GUI program to interface it as a child process.
The output is in the form of:
<number> <string>
Where the number is the type of prompt returned from pam
lib, and the string is the prompt to give the user.
The prompt numbers are as follows:
1 Prompt with visible input.
2 Prompt with invisible input.
3 Informational message.
4 Error message.
5 Count of messages sent in this block so far.
6 The name of the service being used.
7 Whether or not the command will be executed as the
user if authentication fails.
8 The name of the user being authenticated.
OPTIONS
-d A comma-separated list of three descriptors which
need to be reattached to the standard handles
before the command is executed; only used with -w.
-t Text mode authentication instead of the numbered
message types just described; only used with -w.
through. userhelper will look up in the file
/etc/security/console.apps/programname the username
to authenticate stored as USER=value (value is nor
mally "root" or the magic token "<user>" which
indicates to authenticate the current user) and the
program to run stored as PROGRAM=value (value must
be an absolute path or it will be ignored). If
USER is not specified, the current user is used,
and if PROGRAM is not specified, userhelper looks
for programname in /sbin and /usr/sbin/. user
helper will then authenticate the user via pam and
then run the named program. If SESSION=true is
specified, then userhelper establishes a pam ses
sion and forks and execs, then waits around for the
child to exit; otherwise, it simply execs the
child. userhelper is normally called from console
helper via a symlink. If FALLBACK=true is speci
fied, the program will run as user if authentica
tion fails. Authentication will be retried twice
(three times total) unless something other than
RETRY=2 is specified.
-c Change the current user's password. Note that this
option cannot be used with any of the other
options. This is due to the limitation in the
interface to pamlib.
-f Specify a new Full Name.
-o Specify a new Office.
-p Specify a new Office Phone.
-h Specify a new Home Phone.
-s Specify a new shell.
EXIT STATUS
A non-zero exit status indicates an error occured. Those
errors are:
1 The authentication passwords was incorrect.
2 One or more of the GECOS fields is invalid. This
occurs when there is a colon supplied in one of the
fields.
3 Password resetting error.
4 Some system files are locked.
5 User unknown.
7 Invalid call to this program.
8 The shell provided is not valid (i.e., does not
exist in /etc/shells).
9 Ran out of memory.
10 Could not find the program.
11 exec failed even though program exists.
255 Unknown error.
FILES
/etc/passwd The gecos and shell information
is stored in this file.
/etc/shells This file is checked to see if
the new shell supplied is valid.
SEE ALSO
userpasswd(1), userinfo(1), consolehelper(8), chfn(1),
chsh(1), passwd(5)
AUTHOR
Otto Hammersmith <otto@redhat.com>
Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm@redhat.com>
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