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Johannes Ernst
Asked: 2020-08-29 10:38:47 +0800 CST

What's !* in the password field in /etc/shadow?

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Looking into my /etc/shadow file of a fairly new box today (running Arch), I see some passwords as * (disabled) but some others as !*, !! and as !. Presumably that means "disabled", too, but why is the value different?

Is there some convention that I haven't heard of? :-) and if so where would that be documented?

Excerpt:

root:*:14871::::::
dbus:!!:18407::::::
dnsmasq:!*:18499::::::
shepherd:!:18502:0:99999:7:::
linux password arch-linux shadow

1 Answers

  1. Synthesizing the Unix & Linux page regarding the /etc/shadow file

    • *: "By convention, accounts that are not intended to be logged in to (e.g. bin, daemon, sshd) only contain a single asterisk in the password field"
    • !: Both "!" and "!!" being present in the password field mean an account is locked.
    • !!: But "!!" in an account entry in shadow means the account of an user has been created, but not yet given a password

    The strings *, ! and !! all effectively make that the user cannot login (since an encrypted password will never be 1 or 2 characters).

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