QuestionQ13

Problem Determination and Management

An administrator compares the lsuser command output with the contents of /etc/passwd. The lsuser output shows 116 user accounts, while /etc/passwd contains only 16.

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What could explain this?

  • A /etc/passwd contains only system accounts, all other users are in /etc/security/user
  • B /etc/passwd doesn't play any role on AIX, the information is stored in /etc/security/passwd
  • C /etc/passwd contains only local accounts, for other users an external user registry like LDAP is used
  • D /etc/passwd doesn't contain any users, only references to other authentication mechanisms
Explanation

In AIX, /etc/passwd contains locally defined user accounts, while user definitions can also be held in an external registry such as LDAP. When LDAP is configured, lsuser can list those LDAP-defined users even though they have no corresponding entries in the local /etc/passwd file.

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