1 Long: user 2 Short: u 3 Arg: <user:password> 4 Help: Server user and password 5 Category: important auth 6 --- 7 Specify the user name and password to use for server authentication. Overrides 8 --netrc and --netrc-optional. 9 10 If you simply specify the user name, curl will prompt for a password. 11 12 The user name and passwords are split up on the first colon, which makes it 13 impossible to use a colon in the user name with this option. The password can, 14 still. 15 16 On systems where it works, curl will hide the given option argument from 17 process listings. This is not enough to protect credentials from possibly 18 getting seen by other users on the same system as they will still be visible 19 for a brief moment before cleared. Such sensitive data should be retrieved 20 from a file instead or similar and never used in clear text in a command line. 21 22 When using Kerberos V5 with a Windows based server you should include the 23 Windows domain name in the user name, in order for the server to successfully 24 obtain a Kerberos Ticket. If you don't then the initial authentication 25 handshake may fail. 26 27 When using NTLM, the user name can be specified simply as the user name, 28 without the domain, if there is a single domain and forest in your setup 29 for example. 30 31 To specify the domain name use either Down-Level Logon Name or UPN (User 32 Principal Name) formats. For example, EXAMPLE\\user and user@example.com 33 respectively. 34 35 If you use a Windows SSPI-enabled curl binary and perform Kerberos V5, 36 Negotiate, NTLM or Digest authentication then you can tell curl to select 37 the user name and password from your environment by specifying a single colon 38 with this option: "-u :". 39 40 If this option is used several times, the last one will be used. 41