1--- 2c: Copyright (C) Daniel Stenberg, <daniel@haxx.se>, et al. 3SPDX-License-Identifier: curl 4Long: user 5Short: u 6Arg: <user:password> 7Help: Server user and password 8Category: important auth 9Added: 4.0 10Multi: single 11See-also: 12 - netrc 13 - config 14Example: 15 - -u user:secret $URL 16--- 17 18# `--user` 19 20Specify the username and password to use for server authentication. Overrides 21--netrc and --netrc-optional. 22 23If you simply specify the username, curl prompts for a password. 24 25The username and passwords are split up on the first colon, which makes it 26impossible to use a colon in the username with this option. The password can, 27still. 28 29On systems where it works, curl hides the given option argument from process 30listings. This is not enough to protect credentials from possibly getting seen 31by other users on the same system as they still are visible for a moment 32before cleared. Such sensitive data should be retrieved from a file instead or 33similar and never used in clear text in a command line. 34 35When using Kerberos V5 with a Windows based server you should include the 36Windows domain name in the username, in order for the server to successfully 37obtain a Kerberos Ticket. If you do not, then the initial authentication 38handshake may fail. 39 40When using NTLM, the username can be specified simply as the username, without 41the domain, if there is a single domain and forest in your setup for example. 42 43To specify the domain name use either Down-Level Logon Name or UPN (User 44Principal Name) formats. For example, EXAMPLE\user and user@example.com 45respectively. 46 47If you use a Windows SSPI-enabled curl binary and perform Kerberos V5, 48Negotiate, NTLM or Digest authentication then you can tell curl to select the 49username and password from your environment by specifying a single colon with 50this option: "-u :". 51
