[ale] how to create user with no password

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Fri, Feb 27, 2004 at 03:29:18PM -0500, James P. Kinney III wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-02-27 at 10:07, 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!
> > 
> > 	Perhaps bash doesn't do this now, but I'll bet you a purty (I can use
> > that term, as I was born here) that it will!
> > 
> > 	Mr. Toxen, confirmation please?

> I think you are correct in this. /bin/false _used_ to be a special "null
> shell" replacement. In RedHat it exists and and does load a bash shell
> to run from.

[mhw at alcove mhw]$ cat /etc/issue
Red Hat Linux release 7.3 (Valhalla)
Kernel \r on an \m
 
[mhw at alcove mhw]$ file /bin/false
/bin/false: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.2.5, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

[mhw at canyon mhw]$ cat /etc/issue
Fedora Core release 1 (Yarrow)
Kernel \r on an \m
 
[mhw at canyon mhw]$ file /bin/false
/bin/false: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.2.5, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped
[mhw at canyon mhw]$

	Use to be true.  May still be true on SCO Unix.  :-)  Hasn't been
true on any recent versions of RedHat.

	That being said, I also agree that using /bin/false is bad practice,
not because it's a shell script but because it MIGHT be.  Develop a bad
habit and switch to another OS and get burned.  Use nologin.

> -- 
> James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
> CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
> Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
> 770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
> http://www.localnetsolutions.com
> 
> GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
> <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
> Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7



> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale


-- 
 Michael H. Warfield    |  (770) 985-6132   |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
  /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/       |  (678) 463-0932   |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
  NIC whois:  MHW9      |  An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0xDF1DD471    |  possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 307 bytes
Desc: not available