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Re: suggestion for cygutils - usermod (was Re: howto change home path in /etc/passwd)
- From: Bernard Kash <bkash at intersoftcorporation dot com>
- To: "'cygwin at cygwin dot com'" <cygwin at cygwin dot com>
- Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 12:42:22 -0500
- Subject: Re: suggestion for cygutils - usermod (was Re: howto change home path in /etc/passwd)
"Igor Pechtchanski" <pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu> wrote in message
news:<Pine.GSO.4.44.0305121055540.393-100000@slinky.cs.nyu.edu>...
> On Mon, 12 May 2003 Sylvain.Ferriol@imag.fr wrote:
>
> > Surlignage Max Bowsher <maxb@ukf.net>:
> >
> > > Sylvain.Ferriol@imag.fr wrote:
> > > > Yes , because i don't want to create a shell doing this: grep -v
> > > > $USERNAME /etc/passwd > /etc/passwd
> > >
> > sorry
> > but i don't know with sed how to delete a line starting with $USER
>
> For the record: "sed '/'$USER':/d". However, grep is perfectly
> adequate. What Max was warning you about was the shell redirection
> mechanism. You'd be safer using something like
>
> cp -p /etc/passwd /etc/passwd-bak-tmp && grep -v $USERNAME
> /etc/passwd-bak-tmp > /etc/passwd && rm -f /etc/passwd-bak-tmp
Unfortunately, if you have a user named Homer that uses
'home' as his userid, the grep will eliminate more users
than you might expect. A more realistic example might be
two users 'ted' and 'ed' when modifying user 'ed'.
Also, the mkuser -p option expects a base directory,
so if $HOME is "/home/usrname" the resulting record
will set HOME to "/home/username/username"
I've used awk delete a user from passwd...
awk -F: -v usr=$USERNAME '{IGNORECASE=1; if($1 != usr) print $1;}'
/etc/passwd
BB
> > > Care! That will leave you with an empty /etc/passwd.
> > > The shell truncates /etc/passwd BEFORE grep reads it.
> > >
> > > > mkpasswd -l -u $USERNAME -p $HOME >> /etc/passwd
> > > >
> > > > sylvain
> > >
> > > Max.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Igor
> --
> http://cs.nyu.edu/~pechtcha/
> |\ _,,,---,,_ pechtcha@cs.nyu.edu
> ZZZzz /,`.-'`' -. ;-;;,_ igor@watson.ibm.com
> |,4- ) )-,_. ,\ ( `'-' Igor Pechtchanski
> '---''(_/--' `-'\_) fL a.k.a JaguaR-R-R-r-r-r-.-.-. Meow!
>
> Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.
> -- Leto II
>
>
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