spwd — The shadow password database — Python 3.11.15 documentation
Description: This module provides access to the Unix shadow password database. It is available on various Unix versions. Availability: not Emscripten, not WASI. This module does not work or is not available on ...

# `spwd` — The shadow password database

Deprecated since version 3.11, will be removed in version 3.13: The `spwd` module is deprecated (see PEP 594 for details and alternatives).

This module provides access to the Unix shadow password database. It is available on various Unix versions.

Availability: not Emscripten, not WASI.

This module does not work or is not available on WebAssembly platforms `wasm32-emscripten` and `wasm32-wasi`. See WebAssembly platforms for more information.

You must have enough privileges to access the shadow password database (this usually means you have to be root).

Shadow password database entries are reported as a tuple-like object, whose attributes correspond to the members of the `spwd` structure (Attribute field below, see `<shadow.h>`):

Index | Attribute | Meaning
--- | --- | ---
0 | `sp_namp` | Login name
1 | `sp_pwdp` | Encrypted password
2 | `sp_lstchg` | Date of last change
3 | `sp_min` | Minimal number of days between changes
4 | `sp_max` | Maximum number of days between changes
5 | `sp_warn` | Number of days before password expires to warn user about it
6 | `sp_inact` | Number of days after password expires until account is disabled
7 | `sp_expire` | Number of days since 1970-01-01 when account expires
8 | `sp_flag` | Reserved

The sp_namp and sp_pwdp items are strings, all others are integers. `KeyError` is raised if the entry asked for cannot be found.

The following functions are defined:

spwd.getspnam(name)

  Return the shadow password database entry for the given user name.

  Changed in version 3.6: Raises a `PermissionError` instead of `KeyError` if the user doesn’t have privileges.

spwd.getspall()

  Return a list of all available shadow password database entries, in arbitrary order.

See also

Module `grp`

  An interface to the group database, similar to this.

Module `pwd`

  An interface to the normal password database, similar to this.