First of all, sorry if I'm blind and am asking an easy/answered question - but I've googled it and looked on numerous forums and can't seem to find an answer, SO:

I'm simply looking for a way to setup what times an account is active (can be logged in / running programs) and what time it's disabled (where login is denied)... like say "every day from 7pm to 8pm" or something along those lines.

Is there any way to do this without manually writing a script or setting a cron job? (or, if cron is the only way: would I just set the shell to like /sbin/nologin and then reset it at the "accessible" time... or is there something better I can change?)

Thanks in advance.

Hi,

A solution could be a cron job which modify /etc/login.access file according to the time of the day.

Oliv'

PAM is what you are looking for !. Play with /etc/pam.d/ directory and /etc/security/time.conf file for various time base box managment. For more information see the documentation here.

Enjoy !!

Thanks, karunesh, I was trying to remember the solution from something I'd read in one of the various Linux+ books some time ago ... I knew there was a simple acronym for it but couldn't put my fingers on it.

-- Poetics