USERHELPER(8)                                       USERHELPER(8)

NAME
       userhelper - A helper interface to pam.

SYNOPSIS
       userhelper [ -t ] [ -w prog args ] [ -c ] [ -f full-name ]
       [ -o office ]    [ -p office-phone ]     [ -h home-phone ]
       [ -s shell ] [ username ]

DESCRIPTION
       NOTE this program is NOT intended to be run interactively.
       If you want to change this information on the command line
       use passwd(1), chfn(1), or chsh(1).

       This program provides a basic interface to change a user's
       password, gecos information, and shell.  The main  differ-
       nce  between this program and it's traditional equivilents
       is that prompts come out on standard out to make  it  easy
       for a GUI program to interface it as a child process.

       The output is in the form of:

       <number> <string>

       Where  the number is the type of prompt returned from pam-
       lib, and the string is the prompt to give the user.

       The prompt numbers are as follows:

       1      Prompt with visible input.

       2      Prompt with invisible input.

       3      Informational message.

       4      Error message.

       5      Count of messages sent in this block so far.

OPTIONS
       -t     Text mode authentication instead  of  the  numbered
              message types just described; only used with -w.

       -w     Specify  a  program name and arguments to be passed
              through.  userhelper will authenticate the user via
              pam and then exec the named program, if such a pro-
              gram exists in /usr/sbin or /sbin.  Normally called
              from consolehelper via a symlink.

       -c     Change the current user's password.  Note that this
              option  cannot  be  used  with  any  of  the  other
              options.   This  is  due  to  the limitation in the
              interface to pamlib.

       -f     Specify a new Full Name.

       -o     Specify a new Office.

       -p     Specify a new Office Phone.

       -h     Specify a new Home Phone.

       -s     Specify a new shell.

EXIT STATUS
       A non-zero exit status indicates an error occured.   Those
       errors are:

       1      The authentication passwords was incorrect.

       2      One  or  more of the GECOS fields is invalid.  This
              occurs when there is a colon supplied in one of the
              fields.

       3      Password resetting error.

       4      Some system files are locked.

       5      User unknown.

       6      Insufficent rights.

       7      Invalid call to this program.

       8      The  shell  provided  is  not valid (i.e., does not
              exist in /etc/shells).

       9      Ran out of memory.

       10     Could not find the program.

       11     exec failed even though program exists.

       255    Unknown error.

FILES
       /etc/passwd              The gecos and  shell  information
                                is stored in this file.

       /etc/shells              This  file  is  checked to see if
                                the new shell supplied is  valid.

SEE ALSO
       userpasswd(1),   userinfo(1),  consolehelper(8),  chfn(1),
       chsh(1), passwd(5)

AUTHOR
       Otto Hammersmith <otto@redhat.com>
       Michael K. Johnson <johnsonm@redhat.com>

Red Hat Software          19 March 1999                         1