LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Richard Sharpe <sharpe@ns.aus.com>
  To  : LinuxSA@linuxsa.org.au
  Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 12:57:22 +0900

The correct way to temporarily disable an account

A question came up at the recent LPI BOF at AUUG2K in Canberra.

   "What is the correct way to temporarily disable an account?"

The LPI says that there is one correct way. A poll of those at the BOF did
not come up with the correct way.

LPI says that you should use 'passwd -l <user>', as that is the only
command that syncs the modification time of /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow.
Any discrepancy between these two files is an indication that someone has
compromised your system.

Now, before you go diving off to your man pages, the -l flag is documented
and works on my Mandrake 7.1 system, not sure about RedHat 6.2, but I do
have an older systems where it just does not exist (about 12 months old).


Regards
-------
Richard Sharpe, sharpe@ns.aus.com
Samba (Team member, www.samba.org), Ethereal (Team member, www.zing.org)
Co-author, SAMS Teach Yourself Samba in 24 Hours
Author: First Australian 5-day, intensive, hands-on Linux SysAdmin course
Author: First Australian 2-day, intensive, hands-on Samba course

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