Hi all,

My server host a few domain for basic web and email services.
I do not wish to allow my users to have shell access.
So I put /bin/false as their shell. It works.

However, they cannot use the vacation feature in sendmail if they do not have a shell. The error message will say no permission of something. Do not remember the actual error msg.

My question:
How can I disable the shell access and at the same time able to use the vacation msg.

my user's has a "|vacation username" in their .forward
without shell, the vacation program cannot run.

Any idea how do I go around it?

if you're only basically wanting to disallow remote logins or certain local ones, have a look at the /etc/security/access.conf file which can, for example, dissallow all physical logins (i.e. mail logins will be ok) to certain users, based on tty, ip address and various other factors

Someone suggested to use .profile with a statement "logout".

It works and vacation program works too.

Simple and effective approach!

Anyway, thanks a lot.!!

Very interesting. I will need to remember that one.