vipw(8) — Linux manual page

VIPW(8)                 System Management Commands                VIPW(8)

NAME         top

       vipw, vigr - edit the password, group, shadow-password or
       shadow-group file

SYNOPSIS         top

       vipw [options]

       vigr [options]

DESCRIPTION         top

       The vipw and vigr commands edit the files /etc/passwd and
       /etc/group, respectively. With the -s flag, they will edit the
       shadow versions of those files, /etc/shadow and /etc/gshadow,
       respectively. The programs will set the appropriate locks to
       prevent file corruption. When looking for an editor, the programs
       will first try the environment variable $VISUAL, then the
       environment variable $EDITOR, and finally the default editor,
       vi(1).

OPTIONS         top

       The options which apply to the vipw and vigr commands are:

       -g, --group
           Edit group database.

       -h, --help
           Display help message and exit.

       -p, --passwd
           Edit passwd database.

       -q, --quiet
           Quiet mode.

       -R, --root CHROOT_DIR
           Apply changes in the CHROOT_DIR directory and use the
           configuration files from the CHROOT_DIR directory. Only
           absolute paths are supported.

       -s, --shadow
           Edit shadow or gshadow database.

ENVIRONMENT         top

       VISUAL
           Editor to be used.

       EDITOR
           Editor to be used if VISUAL is not set.

FILES         top

       /etc/group
           Group account information.

       /etc/gshadow
           Secure group account information.

       /etc/passwd
           User account information.

       /etc/shadow
           Secure user account information.

SEE ALSO         top

       vi(1), group(5), gshadow(5) , passwd(5), , shadow(5).

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the shadow-utils (utilities for managing
       accounts and shadow password files) project.  Information about
       the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩.  If you have a bug report
       for this manual page, send it to
       [email protected].  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩ on 2025-08-11.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2025-08-10.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
       a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       [email protected]

shadow-utils 4.18.0             08/11/2025                        VIPW(8)

Pages that refer to this page: group(5),  passwd(5)

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