[ale] how to create user with no password

Chris Ricker kaboom at gatech.edu
Fri Feb 27 10:59:36 EST 2004


On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Danny Cox wrote:

> James,
> 
> On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 11:27, James P. Kinney III wrote:
> > And while your editing the /etc/passwd file, change the line that reads:
> > /bin/bash
> > to:
> > /bin/false
> 
> 	Actually, this is dangerous.  It starts a shell, which begins to parse
> /bin/false and if you can catch it between the time it starts, and when
> it exits with an interrupt, the shell will happily give you a prompt!

Actually, false on most Linuxes is a binary that login just execs. On other 
Unixes its often a shell script, though

A better choice instead of false, on the Linuxes that provide it, is
nologin. That's usually available on BSDs as well....

later,
chris



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