This is a weird question, but it strikes me as question a fish might ask about water.
How is the /etc/passwd
file created? Initially.
Where I am coming from is this
- I'm a Linux sysadmin and have been for years
- I'm using Ubuntu but this could probably be asked of any distro
- I found that the
/etc/passwd
file is not actually owned by any packages
So, for example this
# dpkg -S /etc/passwd
dpkg-query: no path found matching pattern /etc/passwd
and this
# dpkg -L passwd | grep '/etc/passwd'
(no results)
That package has all the tools to work with /etc/passwd
. Just, not the file itself.
Is there an operation during installation from the installation media that creates this file?
Or is it just a boilerplate file buried in the installation media?
Or something else?
Best Answer
For Ubuntu and Debian the
base-passwd
package deploys not a packaged file, which is why runningdpkg -L
doesn't work, but generates the file from the pre-install script/var/lib/dpkg/info/base-passwd.preinst
For my RHEL and CentOS the equivalent
rpm -qf /etc/passwd
does show a package "owning" that file, thesetup
RPM package.