[ale] Permissions Q

[John Mills]

Hi, Mike -

On Thu, 13 Jun 2002, Mike Millson wrote:

> What is meant by a 'no login' account? Is this an account created with the
> useradd -r option where the account doesn't have a home directory? Just an
> account that people su to but never log in as?

Almost, but not quite. The account must exist and must have a home
directory. If you look in '/etc/passwd', you may see some lines where the
shell is: "/sbin/nologin" in place of most users' "/bin/bash" (or
whatever).

Check that "/sbin/nologin" is really there, and use this shell entry in
'/etc/passwd' for those users who will be accessing the server, but not
logging in on their accounts on the server. (This also makes it more
difficult for them to fiddle with the repository.)

I generated the accounts in the usual way, then I replaced their default
shells with "/sbin/nologin".

I don't know if one can 'su' to such an accout, but it's possible.

 - John Mills


---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.