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<h1>smbpasswd (5)</h1>
<h2>Samba</h2>
<h2>23 Oct 1998</h2>

    

    
<p><br><a name="NAME"></a>
<h2>NAME</h2>
    smbpasswd - The Samba encrypted password file
<p><br><a name="SYNOPSIS"></a>
<h2>SYNOPSIS</h2>
     
<p><br>smbpasswd is the <strong>Samba</strong> encrypted password file.
<p><br><a name="DESCRIPTION"></a>
<h2>DESCRIPTION</h2>
    
<p><br>This file is part of the <strong>Samba</strong> suite.
<p><br>smbpasswd is the <strong>Samba</strong> encrypted password file. It contains
the username, Unix user id and the SMB hashed passwords of the
user, as well as account flag information and the time the password
was last changed. This file format has been evolving with Samba
and has had several different formats in the past.
<p><br><a name="FILEFORMAT"></a>
<h2>FILE FORMAT</h2>
    
<p><br>The format of the smbpasswd file used by Samba 2.0 is very similar to
the familiar Unix <strong>passwd (5)</strong> file. It is an ASCII file containing
one line for each user. Each field within each line is separated from
the next by a colon. Any entry beginning with # is ignored. The
smbpasswd file contains the following information for each user:
<p><br><ul>
<p><br><a name="name"></a>
<li><strong><strong>name</strong></strong> <br> <br>
<p><br>This is the user name. It must be a name that already exists
	in the standard UNIX passwd file.
<p><br><a name="uid"></a>
<li><strong><strong>uid</strong></strong> <br> <br>
<p><br>This is the UNIX uid. It must match the uid field for the same
	user entry in the standard UNIX passwd file. If this does not
	match then Samba will refuse to recognize this <strong>smbpasswd</strong> file entry
	as being valid for a user.
<p><br><a name="LanmanPasswordHash"></a>
<li><strong><strong>Lanman Password Hash</strong></strong> <br> <br>
<p><br>This is the <em>LANMAN</em> hash of the users password, encoded as 32 hex
	digits. The <em>LANMAN</em> hash is created by DES encrypting a well known
	string with the users password as the DES key. This is the same
	password used by Windows 95/98 machines. Note that this password hash
	is regarded as weak as it is vulnerable to dictionary attacks and if
	two users choose the same password this entry will be identical (i.e.
	the password is not <em>"salted"</em> as the UNIX password is). If the
	user has a null password this field will contain the characters
	<code>"NO PASSWORD"</code> as the start of the hex string. If the hex string
	is equal to 32 <code>'X'</code> characters then the users account is marked as
	<em>disabled</em> and the user will not be able to log onto the Samba
	server.
<p><br><em>WARNING !!</em>. Note that, due to the challenge-response nature of the
	SMB/CIFS authentication protocol, anyone with a knowledge of this
	password hash will be able to impersonate the user on the network.
	For this reason these hashes are known as <em>"plain text equivalent"</em>
	and must <em>NOT</em> be made available to anyone but the root user. To
	protect these passwords the <strong>smbpasswd</strong> file is placed in a
	directory with read and traverse access only to the root user and the
	<strong>smbpasswd</strong> file itself must be set to be read/write only by root,
	with no other access.
<p><br><a name="NTPasswordHash"></a>
<li><strong><strong>NT Password Hash</strong></strong> <br> <br>
<p><br>This is the <em>Windows NT</em> hash of the users password, encoded as 32
	hex digits. The <em>Windows NT</em> hash is created by taking the users
	password as represented in 16-bit, little-endian UNICODE and then
	applying the <em>MD4</em> (internet rfc1321) hashing algorithm to it.
<p><br>This password hash is considered more secure than the <a href="smbpasswd.5.html#LanmanPasswordHash"><strong>Lanman
	Password Hash</strong></a> as it preserves the case of the
	password and uses a much higher quality hashing algorithm. However, it
	is still the case that if two users choose the same password this
	entry will be identical (i.e. the password is not <em>"salted"</em> as the
	UNIX password is).
<p><br><em>WARNING !!</em>. Note that, due to the challenge-response nature of the
	SMB/CIFS authentication protocol, anyone with a knowledge of this
	password hash will be able to impersonate the user on the network.
	For this reason these hashes are known as <em>"plain text equivalent"</em>
	and must <em>NOT</em> be made available to anyone but the root user. To
	protect these passwords the <strong>smbpasswd</strong> file is placed in a
	directory with read and traverse access only to the root user and the
	<strong>smbpasswd</strong> file itself must be set to be read/write only by root,
	with no other access.
<p><br><a name="AccountFlags"></a>
<li><strong><strong>Account Flags</strong></strong> <br> <br>
<p><br>This section contains flags that describe the attributes of the users
	account. In the <strong>Samba2.0</strong> release this field is bracketed by <code>'['</code>
	and <code>']'</code> characters and is always 13 characters in length (including
	the <code>'['</code> and <code>']'</code> characters). The contents of this field may be
	any of the characters.
<p><br><ul>
<p><br><a name="capU"></a>
		<li > <strong>'U'</strong> This means this is a <em>"User"</em> account, i.e. an ordinary
		user. Only <strong>User</strong> and <a href="smbpasswd.5.html#capW"><strong>Workstation Trust</strong></a> accounts are
		currently supported in the <strong>smbpasswd</strong> file.
<p><br><a name="capN"></a>
		<li > <strong>'N'</strong> This means the account has <em>no</em> password (the passwords
		in the fields <a href="smbpasswd.5.html#LanmanPasswordHash"><strong>Lanman Password Hash</strong></a> and
	        <a href="smbpasswd.5.html#NTPasswordHash"><strong>NT Password Hash</strong></a> are ignored). Note that this
		will only allow users to log on with no password if the 
		<a href="smb.conf.5.html#nullpasswords"><strong>null passwords</strong></a> parameter is set
		in the <a href="smb.conf.5.html"><strong>smb.conf (5)</strong></a> config file.
<p><br><a name="capD"></a>
		<li > <strong>'D'</strong> This means the account is disabled and no SMB/CIFS logins 
		will be	allowed for this user.
<p><br><a name="capW"></a>
		<li > <strong>'W'</strong> This means this account is a <em>"Workstation Trust"</em> account.
		This kind of account is used in the Samba PDC code stream to allow Windows
		NT Workstations and Servers to join a Domain hosted by a Samba PDC.
<p><br></ul>
<p><br>Other flags may be added as the code is extended in future. The rest of
	this field space is filled in with spaces.
<p><br><a name="LastChangeTime"></a>
<li><strong><strong>Last Change Time</strong></strong> <br> <br>
<p><br>This field consists of the time the account was last modified. It consists of
	the characters <code>LCT-</code> (standing for <em>"Last Change Time"</em>) followed by a numeric
	encoding of the UNIX time in seconds since the epoch (1970) that the last change
	was made.
<p><br><li><strong><strong>Following fields</strong></strong> <br> <br>
<p><br>All other colon separated fields are ignored at this time.
<p><br></ul>
<p><br><a name="NOTES"></a>
<h2>NOTES</h2>
    
<p><br>In previous versions of Samba (notably the 1.9.18 series) this file
did not contain the <a href="smbpasswd.5.html#AccountFlags"><strong>Account Flags</strong></a> or 
<a href="smbpasswd.5.html#LastChangeTime"><strong>Last Change Time</strong></a> fields. The Samba 2.0
code will read and write these older password files but will not be able to
modify the old entries to add the new fields. New entries added with
<a href="smbpasswd.8.html"><strong>smbpasswd (8)</strong></a> will contain the new fields
in the added accounts however. Thus an older <strong>smbpasswd</strong> file used
with Samba 2.0 may end up with some accounts containing the new fields
and some not.
<p><br>In order to convert from an old-style <strong>smbpasswd</strong> file to a new
style, run the script <strong>convert_smbpasswd</strong>, installed in the
Samba <code>bin/</code> directory (the same place that the <a href="smbd.8.html"><strong>smbd</strong></a>
and <a href="nmbd.8.html"><strong>nmbd</strong></a> binaries are installed) as follows:
<p><br><pre>


    cat old_smbpasswd_file | convert_smbpasswd &gt; new_smbpasswd_file


</pre>

<p><br>The <strong>convert_smbpasswd</strong> script reads from stdin and writes to stdout
so as not to overwrite any files by accident.
<p><br>Once this script has been run, check the contents of the new smbpasswd
file to ensure that it has not been damaged by the conversion script
(which uses <strong>awk</strong>), and then replace the <code>&lt;old smbpasswd file&gt;</code>
with the <code>&lt;new smbpasswd file&gt;</code>.
<p><br><a name="VERSION"></a>
<h2>VERSION</h2>
    
<p><br>This man page is correct for version 2.0 of the Samba suite.
<p><br><a name="SEEALSO"></a>
<h2>SEE ALSO</h2>
    
<p><br><a href="smbpasswd.8.html"><strong>smbpasswd (8)</strong></a>, <a href="samba.7.html"><strong>samba
(7)</strong></a>, and the Internet RFC1321 for details on the MD4
algorithm.
<p><br><a name="AUTHOR"></a>
<h2>AUTHOR</h2>
    
<p><br>The original Samba software and related utilities were created by
Andrew Tridgell <a href="mailto:samba-bugs@samba.org"><em>samba-bugs@samba.org</em></a>. Samba is now developed
by the Samba Team as an Open Source project similar to the way the
Linux kernel is developed.
<p><br>The original Samba man pages were written by Karl Auer. The man page
sources were converted to YODL format (another excellent piece of Open
Source software, available at
<a href="ftp://ftp.icce.rug.nl/pub/unix/"><strong>ftp://ftp.icce.rug.nl/pub/unix/</strong></a>) 
and updated for the Samba2.0 release by Jeremy
Allison, <a href="mailto:samba-bugs@samba.org"><em>samba-bugs@samba.org</em></a>.
<p><br>See <a href="samba.7.html"><strong>samba (7)</strong></a> to find out how to get a full
list of contributors and details on how to submit bug reports,
comments etc.
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