GETPWNAM(3)

NAME
getpwnam, getpwnam_r, getpwuid, getpwuid_r - get password file entry

SYNOPSIS
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <pwd.h>

struct passwd *getpwnam(const char *name);

struct passwd *getpwuid(uid_t uid);

int getpwnam_r(const char *name, struct passwd *pwbuf,
        char *buf, size_t buflen, struct passwd **pwbufp);

int getpwuid_r(uid_t uid, struct passwd *pwbuf,
        char *buf, size_t buflen, struct passwd **pwbufp);

Feature Test Macro Requirements for glibc (see feature_test_macros(7)):

getpwnam_r(), getpwuid_r(): _POSIX_C_SOURCE || _XOPEN_SOURCE || _BSD_SOURCE || _SVID_SOURCE

DESCRIPTION
The getpwnam() function returns a pointer to a structure containing the broken-out fields of the record in the password database (e.g., the local password file /etc/passwd, NIS, and LDAP) that matches the user name name.

The getpwuid() function returns a pointer to a structure containing the broken-out fields of the record in the password database that matches the user ID uid.

The getpwnam_r() and getpwuid_r() functions obtain the same information, but store the retrieved passwd structure in the space pointed to by pwbuf. This passwd structure contains pointers to strings, and these strings are stored in the buffer buf of size buflen. A pointer to the result (in case of success) or NULL (in case no entry was found or an error occurred) is stored in *pwbufp.

The passwd structure is defined in <pwd.h> as follows:

    struct passwd {
        char   *pw_name;       /* user name */
        char   *pw_passwd;     /* user password */
        uid_t   pw_uid;        /* user ID */
        gid_t   pw_gid;        /* group ID */
        char   *pw_gecos;      /* real name */
        char   *pw_dir;        /* home directory */
        char   *pw_shell;      /* shell program */
    };

The maximum needed size for buf can be found using sysconf(3) with the _SC_GETPW_R_SIZE_MAX parameter.

RETURN VALUE
The getpwnam() and getpwuid() functions return a pointer to a passwd structure, or NULL if the matching entry is not found or an error occurs. If an error occurs, errno is set appropriately. If one wants to check errno after the call, it should be set to zero before the call.

The return value may point to static area, and may be overwritten by subsequent calls to getpwent(3), getpwnam(), or getpwuid().

The getpwnam_r() and getpwuid_r() functions return zero on success. In case of error, an error number is returned.

ERRORS

0 or ENOENT or ESRCH or EBADF or EPERM or ...
    The given name or uid was not found.

EINTR
    A signal was caught.

EIO I/O error.

EMFILE
    The maximum number (OPEN_MAX) of files was open already in the calling process.

ENFILE
    The maximum number of files was open already in the system.

ENOMEM
    Insufficient memory to allocate passwd structure.

ERANGE
    Insufficient buffer space supplied.

FILES

/etc/passwd
    local password database file

CONFORMING TO
SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001

NOTES
The formulation given above under "RETURN VALUE" is from POSIX.1-2001. It does not call "not found" an error, and hence does not specify what value errno might have in this situation. But that makes it impossible to recognize errors. One might argue that according to POSIX errno should be left unchanged if an entry is not found. Experiments on various Unix-like systems show that lots of different values occur in this situation: 0, ENOENT, EBADF, ESRCH, EWOULDBLOCK, EPERM and probably others. The pw_dir field contains the name of the initial working directory of the user. Login programs use the value of this field to initialize the HOME environment variable for the login shell. An application that wants to determine its user's home directory should inspect the value of HOME (rather than the value getpwuid(getuid())->pw_dir) since this allows the user to modify their notion of "the home directory" during a login session. To determine the (initial) home directory of another user, it is necessary to use getpwnam("username")->pw_dir or similar.

SEE ALSO
endpwent(3), fgetpwent(3), getgrnam(3), getpw(3), getpwent(3), putpwent(3), setpwent(3), passwd(5)