.\" Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California. .\" All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms are permitted provided .\" that: (1) source distributions retain this entire copyright notice and .\" comment, and (2) distributions including binaries display the following .\" acknowledgement: ``This product includes software developed by the .\" University of California, Berkeley and its contributors'' in the .\" documentation or other materials provided with the distribution and in .\" all advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software. .\" Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors may .\" be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without .\" specific prior written permission. .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED .\" WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF .\" MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. .\" .\" @(#)vipw.8 6.5 (Berkeley) 6/24/90 .\" .TH VIPW 8 "June 24, 1990" .UC 4 .SH NAME vipw \- edit the password file .SH SYNOPSIS .B vipw .SH DESCRIPTION .I Vipw edits the password file while setting the appropriate locks, and does any necessary processing after the password file is unlocked. If the password file is already being edited, then you will be told to try again later. The .I vi editor will be used unless the environment variable EDITOR indicates an alternate editor. .PP .I Vipw performs a number of consistency checks on the password entries, and will not allow a password file with a ``mangled'' entry to be installed. If .I vipw rejects the new password file, the user is prompted to re-enter the edit session. .PP Once the information has been verified, .I vipw uses .IR mkpasswd (8) to update the user database. This is run in the background, and, at very large sites could take several minutes. Until this update is completed, the password file is unavailable for other updates and the new information will not be available to programs. .SH SEE ALSO chpass(1), passwd(1), passwd(5), adduser(8), mkpasswd(8)