> Juhan writes: > > The GECOS field in UNIX passwd file can contain more information than > only the name, ie comma separated list of name, room number, phone et > cetera. I believe, that the *pw_gecos points to the whole field, not > only to name part. I may be wrong though. >
You can pretty much put anything in the GECOS field but usually it's just the person's name. From 'man 5 passwd': GECOS This field is optional and only used for informational purposes. Usually, it contains the full user name. GECOS means General Electric Comprehensive Operating System, which has been renamed to GCOS when GE's large systems division was sold to Honeywell. Dennis Ritchie has reported: "Sometimes we sent printer out- put or batch jobs to the GCOS machine. The gcos field in the password file was a place to stash the information for the $IDENTcard. Not elegant. -- Loren Bandiera, CISSP <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> MMG Security, Inc. _______________________________________________ Mono-list maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list
