smbpasswd (manpage)

NAME

 * - change a user's SMB password

DESCRIPTION
This tool is part of the (7) suite. The smbpasswd program has several different  functions,  depending  on       whether it is run by the root user or not. When run as a normal user it      allows the user to change the password used for their SMB  sessions  on       any machines that store SMB passwords. By default  (when run with no arguments) it will attempt to change the current user's SMB password on the local machine. This is  similar  to       the  way  the  passwd(1) program works. smbpasswd differs from how the passwd program works however in that it is not setuid root but works in      a  client-server  mode and communicates with a locally running smbd(8). As a consequence in order for this to succeed the smbd daemon must  be       running on the local machine. On a UNIX machine the encrypted SMB pass- words are usually stored in the smbpasswd(5) file. When run by an ordinary user with no options,  smbpasswd  will  prompt them for  their old SMB password and then ask them for their new pass- word twice, to ensure that the new password was  typed  correctly. No      passwords  will be echoed on the screen whilst being typed. If you have a blank SMB password (specified by the string "NO PASSWORD" in the smb-      passwd  file)  then  just press the  key when asked for your old password. smbpasswd can also be used by a normal user to change their SMB  pass- word on remote machines, such as Windows NT Primary Domain Controllers. See the (-r) and -U options below. When run by root, smbpasswd allows new users to be added and deleted in      the  smbpasswd file, as well as allows changes to the attributes of the user in this file to be made. When run by root, smbpasswd accesses the local smbpasswd file directly, thus enabling changes to be made even if      smbd is not running.

OPTIONS
-a    This option specifies that  the  username  following  should  be              added  to  the local smbpasswd file, with the new password typed (type  for the old password). This option is ignored  if              the  username following already exists in the smbpasswd file and it is treated like a regular change password command. Note that the default passdb backends require the user to already exist in             the system password file (usually /etc/passwd), else the request to add the user will fail.

This option is only available when running smbpasswd as root.

-x    This  option  specifies  that  the  username following should be              deleted from the local smbpasswd file.

This option is only available when running smbpasswd as root.

-d    This option specifies that the username following should be dis- abled in the local smbpasswd file. This is done by writing a 'D'             flag into the account control space in the smbpasswd file. Once this is  done  all  attempts to authenticate via SMB using this username will fail.

If the smbpasswd file is in the 'old' format (pre-Samba 2.0 for-             mat)  there  is  no  space in the user's password entry to write this information and the command will FAIL. See smbpasswd(5) for details on the 'old' and new password file formats.

This option is only available when running smbpasswd as root.

-e    This  option specifies that the username following should be en- abled in the local smbpasswd file, if the account was previously disabled. If the account was not disabled this option has no ef- fect. Once the account is enabled then the user will be able to              authenticate via SMB once again.

If the  smbpasswd  file is in the 'old' format, then  smbpasswd will FAIL to enable the account. See smbpasswd(5) for details on             the 'old' and new password file formats. This option is only available when running smbpasswd as root.

-D debuglevel debuglevel is an integer from 0 to 10. The default value if this parameter is not specified is zero.

The higher this value, the more detail will be logged to the log files about the activities of smbpasswd. At level 0, only criti- cal errors and serious warnings will be logged.

Levels above 1 will generate considerable amounts of log  data, and should  only  be  used when investigating a problem. Levels above 3 are designed for use only by  developers  and  generate HUGE amounts of log data, most of which is extremely cryptic.

-n    This  option  specifies  that the username following should have their password set to null (i.e. a blank password) in the local smbpasswd file. This is done by writing the string "NO PASSWORD" as the first part of the first password stored in the smbpasswd file.

Note that  to  allow  users to logon to a Samba server once the password has been set to "NO PASSWORD" in the smbpasswd file the administrator must  set the following parameter in the [global] section of the smb.conf file :

null passwords = yes

This option is only available when running smbpasswd as root.

-r remote machine name This option allows a user to specify what machine they wish  to              change  their  password on. Without this parameter smbpasswd de- faults to the local host. The remote machine name is the NetBIOS name of  the SMB/CIFS server to contact to attempt the password change. This name is resolved into an IP address using the stan- dard name  resolution  mechanism  in  all programs of the Samba suite. See the -R name resolve order parameter for  details  on              changing this resolving mechanism.

The username  whose  password is changed is that of the current UNIX logged on user. See the -U username parameter for  details on changing the password for a different username.

Note that  if  changing a Windows NT Domain password the remote machine specified must be the Primary Domain Controller for the domain (Backup Domain Controllers only have a read-only copy of              the user account  database  and  will  not  allow  the  password              change).

Note that Windows 95/98 do not have a real password database so              it is not possible to change passwords specifying a Win95/98 ma- chine as remote machine target.

-R name resolve order This option allows the user of smbpasswd to determine what name resolution services to use when looking up the NetBIOS name  of              the host being connected to.

The options  are  :"lmhosts",  "host", "wins" and "bcast". They cause names to be resolved as follows:

· lmhosts: Lookup an IP address in the Samba lmhosts  file. If                the  line in lmhosts has no name type attached to the NetBIOS name (see the lmhosts(5) for details)  then  any  name  type matches for lookup.

· host: Do a standard host name to IP address resolution, using the system /etc/hosts, NIS, or DNS lookups. This method  of                 name  resolution is operating system depended for instance on                 IRIX or Solaris this  may  be  controlled  by  the  /etc/nss- witch.conf file).  Note that this method is only used if the                 NetBIOS name type being queried is  the  0x20  (server)  name                 type, otherwise it is ignored.

· wins:  Query  a  name  with the IP address listed in the wins server parameter. If no WINS server has been specified  this method will be ignored.

· bcast:  Do  a broadcast on each of the known local interfaces listed in the interfaces parameter. This is the least  reli- able of the name resolution methods as it depends on the tar- get host being on a locally connected subnet.

The default order is lmhosts, host, wins, bcast and without this param- eter or  any entry in the smb.conf(5) file the name resolution methods will be attempted in this order.

-m    This option tells smbpasswd that the account being changed is  a              MACHINE account. Currently this is used when Samba is being used as an NT Primary Domain Controller.

This option is only available when running smbpasswd as root.

-U username This option may only be used in conjunction with the -r option. When changing a password on a remote machine it allows the user to specify the user name on that machine whose password will be              changed. It is  present to allow users who have different user names on different systems to change these passwords.

-h    This option prints the help string for  smbpasswd, selecting the correct one for running as root or as an ordinary user.

-s    This  option  causes  smbpasswd  to  be  silent  (i.e. not issue              prompts) and to read its old and new passwords from standard in- put, rather  than  from  /dev/tty  (like  the passwd(1) program              does). This option is to aid people writing  scripts  to  drive smbpasswd

-w password This parameter is only available if Samba has been compiled with LDAP support. The -w switch is used to specify the password  to              be  used with theldap admin dn. Note that the password is stored in the secrets.tdb and is keyed off of  the  admin's  DN. This means that if the value of ldap admin dn ever changes, the pass- word will need to be manually updated as well.

-i    This option tells smbpasswd that the account being changed is an              interdomain  trust account. Currently this is used when Samba is             being used as an NT Primary Domain Controller. The account con- tains the info about another trusted domain.

This option is only available when running smbpasswd as root.

-L    Run in local mode.

username This specifies  the username for all of theroot only options to              being used as an NT Primary Domain Controller. The account con- tains the info about another trusted domain.

This option is only available when running smbpasswd as root.

-L    Run in local mode.

username This specifies  the username for all of theroot only options to              operate on. Only root can specify this parameter as  only  root has the  permission needed to modify attributes directly in the local smbpasswd file.

VERSION
This man page is correct for version 3.0 of the Samba suite.

AUTHOR
The original Samba software and related utilities were created by  Andrew  Tridgell. Samba is  now  developed by the Samba Team as an Open Source project similar to the way the Linux kernel is developed.

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 ftp://ftp.icce.rug.nl/pub/unix/) and  updated  for  the  Samba 2.0 release by Jeremy Allison. The conversion to DocBook for Samba 2.2 was done by Gerald Carter. The conversion to DocBook XML 4.2 for Samba 3.0 was done by Alexander Bokovoy.

Edit Notes

 * 2006-01-29 Transcribed from Ubuntu (hoary) manpages