HP-UX Reference (11i v1 05/09) - 1 User Commands A-M (vol 1)

c
chfn(1) chfn(1)
WARNINGS
The encoding of office and extension information is installation-dependent.
For historical reasons, the user’s name, etc., are stored in the
/etc/passwd file. This is an inappropriate
place to store the information.
Because two users may try to write the
passwd file at once, a synchronization method was developed. On
rare occasions,
chfn prints a message that the password file is busy. When this occurs,
chfn sleeps for a
short time, then tries to write to the
passwd file again.
AUTHOR
chfn was developed by the University of California, Berkeley.
FILES
/etc/passwd
/etc/ptmp
NOTES
The chfn command is a hard link to passwd command. When chfn is executed, actually the passwd
command gets executed with appropriate arguments to change the user gecos information in the repository
specified in command line. If no repository is specified the gecos information is changed in
/etc/passwd
file.
SEE ALSO
chsh(1), finger(1), passwd(1), passwd(4).
Section 1−−82 Hewlett-Packard Company − 2 − HP-UX 11i Version 1: September 2005