systemd-sysusers(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | CREDENTIALS | EXIT STATUS | SEE ALSO | NOTES | COLOPHON

SYSTEMD-SYSUSERS(8)         systemd-sysusers         SYSTEMD-SYSUSERS(8)

NAME         top

       systemd-sysusers, systemd-sysusers.service - Allocate system
       users and groups

SYNOPSIS         top


       systemd-sysusers [OPTIONS...] [CONFIGFILE...]

       systemd-sysusers.service

DESCRIPTION         top

       systemd-sysusers creates system users and groups, based on files
       in the format described in sysusers.d(5).

       If invoked with no arguments, it applies all directives from all
       files found in the directories specified by sysusers.d(5). When
       invoked with positional arguments, if option --replace=PATH is
       specified, arguments specified on the command line are used
       instead of the configuration file PATH. Otherwise, just the
       configuration specified by the command line arguments is
       executed. The string "-" may be specified instead of a filename
       to instruct systemd-sysusers to read the configuration from
       standard input. If the argument is a relative path, all
       configuration directories are searched for a matching file and
       the file found that has the highest priority is executed. If the
       argument is an absolute path, that file is used directly without
       searching of the configuration directories.

OPTIONS         top

       The following options are understood:

       --root=root
           Takes a directory path as an argument. All paths will be
           prefixed with the given alternate root path, including config
           search paths.

           Added in version 215.

       --image=image
           Takes a path to a disk image file or block device node. If
           specified all operations are applied to file system in the
           indicated disk image. This is similar to --root= but operates
           on file systems stored in disk images or block devices. The
           disk image should either contain just a file system or a set
           of file systems within a GPT partition table, following the
           Discoverable Partitions Specification[1]. For further
           information on supported disk images, see systemd-nspawn(1)'s
           switch of the same name.

           Added in version 247.

       --image-policy=policy
           Takes an image policy string as argument, as per
           systemd.image-policy(7). The policy is enforced when
           operating on the disk image specified via --image=, see
           above. If not specified defaults to the "*" policy, i.e. all
           recognized file systems in the image are used.

       --replace=PATH
           When this option is given, one or more positional arguments
           must be specified. All configuration files found in the
           directories listed in sysusers.d(5) will be read, and the
           configuration given on the command line will be handled
           instead of and with the same priority as the configuration
           file PATH.

           This option is intended to be used when package installation
           scripts are running and files belonging to that package are
           not yet available on disk, so their contents must be given on
           the command line, but the admin configuration might already
           exist and should be given higher priority.

           Example 1. RPM installation script for radvd

               echo 'u radvd - "radvd daemon"' | \
                         systemd-sysusers --replace=/usr/lib/sysusers.d/radvd.conf -

           This will create the radvd user as if
           /usr/lib/sysusers.d/radvd.conf was already on disk. An admin
           might override the configuration specified on the command
           line by placing /etc/sysusers.d/radvd.conf or even
           /etc/sysusers.d/00-overrides.conf.

           Note that this is the expanded form, and when used in a
           package, this would be written using a macro with "radvd" and
           a file containing the configuration line as arguments.

           Added in version 238.

       --dry-run
           Process the configuration and figure out what entries would
           be created, but don't actually write anything.

           Added in version 250.

       --inline
           Treat each positional argument as a separate configuration
           line instead of a file name.

           Added in version 238.

       --cat-config
           Copy the contents of config files to standard output. Before
           each file, the filename is printed as a comment.

       --tldr
           Copy the contents of config files to standard output. Only
           the "interesting" parts of the configuration files are
           printed, comments and empty lines are skipped. Before each
           file, the filename is printed as a comment.

       --no-pager
           Do not pipe output into a pager.

       -h, --help
           Print a short help text and exit.

       --version
           Print a short version string and exit.

CREDENTIALS         top

       systemd-sysusers supports the service credentials logic as
       implemented by ImportCredential=/LoadCredential=/SetCredential=
       (see systemd.exec(1) for details). The following credentials are
       used when passed in:

       passwd.hashed-password.user
           A UNIX hashed password string to use for the specified user,
           when creating an entry for it. This is particularly useful
           for the "root" user as it allows provisioning the default
           root password to use via a unit file drop-in or from a
           container manager passing in this credential. Note that
           setting this credential has no effect if the specified user
           account already exists. This credential is hence primarily
           useful in first boot scenarios or systems that are fully
           stateless and come up with an empty /etc/ on every boot.

           Added in version 249.

       passwd.plaintext-password.user
           Similar to "passwd.hashed-password.user" but expect a
           literal, plaintext password, which is then automatically
           hashed before used for the user account. If both the hashed
           and the plaintext credential are specified for the same user
           the former takes precedence. It's generally recommended to
           specify the hashed version; however in test environments with
           weaker requirements on security it might be easier to pass
           passwords in plaintext instead.

           Added in version 249.

       passwd.shell.user
           Specifies the shell binary to use for the specified account
           when creating it.

           Added in version 249.

       sysusers.extra
           The contents of this credential may contain additional lines
           to operate on. The credential contents should follow the same
           format as any other sysusers.d/ drop-in. If this credential
           is passed it is processed after all of the drop-in files read
           from the file system.

           Added in version 252.

       Note that by default the systemd-sysusers.service unit file is
       set up to inherit the "passwd.hashed-password.root",
       "passwd.plaintext-password.root", "passwd.shell.root" and
       "sysusers.extra" credentials from the service manager. Thus, when
       invoking a container with an unpopulated /etc/ for the first time
       it is possible to configure the root user's password to be
       "systemd" like this:

           # systemd-nspawn --image=... --set-credential=passwd.hashed-password.root:'$y$j9T$yAuRJu1o5HioZAGDYPU5d.$F64ni6J2y2nNQve90M/p0ZP0ECP/qqzipNyaY9fjGpC' ...

       Note again that the data specified in this credential is
       consulted only when creating an account for the first time, it
       may not be used for changing the password or shell of an account
       that already exists.

       Use mkpasswd(1) for generating UNIX password hashes from the
       command line.

EXIT STATUS         top

       On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise.

SEE ALSO         top

       systemd(1), sysusers.d(5), Users, Groups, UIDs and GIDs on
       systemd systems[2], systemd.exec(1), mkpasswd(1)

NOTES         top

        1. Discoverable Partitions Specification
           https://uapi-group.org/specifications/specs/discoverable_partitions_specification

        2. Users, Groups, UIDs and GIDs on systemd systems
           https://systemd.io/UIDS-GIDS

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the systemd (systemd system and service
       manager) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd⟩.  If you have
       a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#bugreports⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git⟩ on 2023-12-22.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
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       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

systemd 255                                          SYSTEMD-SYSUSERS(8)

Pages that refer to this page: systemd-firstboot(1)systemd-nspawn(1)sysusers.d(5)systemd.directives(7)systemd.index(7)systemd-sysext(8)